CPT-based lateral displacement analysis using p-y method for offshore mono-piles in clays

In this study, a CPT-based p-y analysis method was proposed for the displacement analysis of laterally loaded piles. Key consideration was the continuous soil profiling capability of CPT and cone resistance profiles that do not require artificial assumption or simplification for input parameter selection. The focus is on the application into offshore mono-piles embedded in clays. The correlations of p-y function components to the effective cone resistance were proposed, which can fully utilize CPT measurements. A case example was selected from the literature and used to validate the proposed method. Various parametric studies were performed to examine the effectiveness of the proposed method and investigate the effect of property profile and its depth resolution on the p-y analysis. It was found that the calculation could be largely misleading if wrongly interpreted sub-layer condition or inappropriate resolution of input soil profile was involved in the analyses. It was also found that there is a significant influence depth that dominates overall load response of pile. The soil profile and properties within this depth range affect most significantly calculated load responses, confirming that the soil profile within this depth range should be identified in more detail.