Response of Single Piles in Marine Deposits to Negative Skin Friction from Long-term Field Monitoring

The behavior of single piles subjected to negative skin friction in soft soil was conducted by analyzing the results from full-scale long-term field measurements and three-dimensional (3D) numerical analyses. A skin friction coefficient (α and β coefficients) of the instrumented piles is back-calculated at different degrees of consolidation (U) of soft marine clay. Back-calculated β-values ranged from 0.15 to 0.35 for clay, and from 0.30 to 0.55 for sand, respectively. In addition, back-calculated α-values ranged from 0.1 to 0.3 for coated pile, and from 0.2 to 0.8 for uncoated pile when undrained shear strength of the soft clay was about 30-60 kPa, respectively. Moreover, this study describes behavior of a pile based on full-coupled 3D finite element (FE) analysis. The appropriate parametric studies needed for verifying the pile-soil interaction with consolidation are presented in this paper. Compared to the results from the measurements, it is shown that the computed results are capable of predicting the pile-soil behavior under consolidation. The major parameters that influence the pile behavior are discussed for different soil-pile conditions.