Pile-Soil Interaction in Expansive Soil Foundation: Analytical Solution and Numerical Simulation.

Pile-soil interaction in an expansive soil foundation has been primarily analyzed by an analytical solution in our previous study. As a complementary work, this paper briefly reviews the derivation process in more detail and extends the capability of the solution in dealing with the pile-soil interaction issue under various conditions. The results show that (1) increasing pile length is able to effectively decrease the upward pile movements, but meanwhile, the tensile stresses along the pile shaft increase as well; (2) a critical pile diameter exists (d≈0.04L); (3) when the diameter is less than this value, the upward pile movements can be reasonably reduced, but for the pile with a larger diameter, it has little effect on reducing the upward pile movements, and as irrigation proceeds, both the displacements and tensile stresses increase and both tend to be much less sensitive to the water's incoming over time; and (4) a critical applied pressure for preventing the upward pile movements that is induced by soil's swelling pressure is found to be 2.5 times of the maximum tensile stress of the free pile only under swelling pressure in expansive soil foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]