Pile-Soil Interaction: Laterally loaded piles in soft clay

Abstract: Geotechnical research is focused on realistic analyses of the pile-soil interactions to simulate the large lateral deformations of the embedded piles within the soft marine clay sediments. The analyses use constitutive models developed previously at MIT and are to be validated through comparisons with results of physical model tests for conditions typically found at deepwater sites in the Gulf of Mexico. The ultimate goal is to develop simplified methods for representing realistic pile-soil interactions.