Estimation of lateral pile resistance incorporating soil arching in pile-stabilized slopes

Piles installed in row(s) are used as an effective technique to improve the stability of soil slopes. The analysis of pile-stabilized slopes require a reliable prediction of lateral resistance offered by the piles. In this work, an analytical solution is developed to estimate the lateral resistance offered by the stabilizing piles in sand and c-Φ soil slopes considering soil arching phenomenon. The soil arching in both horizontal direction (between the neighboring piles) and vertical direction (in the active wedge in front of the pile row) are studied and their effects are incorporated in the proposed model. The shape of soil arch is assumed to be circular and principal stress trajectories are defined separately for both modes of arching. Experimental and numerical studies found in literature were used to validate the proposed method. A detailed parametric analysis was performed to study the influence of pile diameter, center-to-center spacing, slope angle and angle of internal friction on the lateral pile resistance.