BEHAVIOUR OF SINGLE PILE UNDER LATERAL CYCLIC LOAD IN MARINE CLAY

The subject of pile foundation subjected to lateral cyclic load is an age-old problem confronted by Geotechnical Engineers. The environment prevalent in ocean necessitates the piles supporting offshore and onshore structures to be designed against lateral cyclic loading resulting from the effects of sea waves. Such loading induces remarkable deterioration in the interactive performance of the soil-pile system. This can be manifested as significant loss in pile capacity associated with increased pile head deflection. The work reported herein is aimed towards conducting extensive experimental investigation on model pipe pile in marine clay under lateral cyclic loading, subsequently followed by theoretical analysis using finite difference technique. The experimental results are compared with the theoretical results and reasonably good agreement is noted. This paper presents brief description of the experimentation and theoretical analysis carried out with some typical results and the relevant conclusions drawn therefrom.