Centrifuge Modelling of Laterally Loaded Piles in Sand: Benchmarking against Large-Scale Tests
Centrifuge Modelling of Laterally Loaded Piles in Sand: Benchmarking against Large-Scale Tests
A collaborative benchmarking exercise within the GEOLAB project involves two large-scale pile tests and 16 centrifuge tests replicating the prototype conditions. The prototypes were 3 m-long, 325 mm-diameter open-ended steel piles embedded 2 m in dense sand. One test applied monotonic lateral loading, and the other involved 13,000 loading cycles. Loaddisplacement, rotation, and strain responses were recorded. Centrifuge tests reproduced the prototype geometry and loading at 11.65g and 17.25g, using the same sand but differing in soil model preparation, loading, and instrumentation. The paper evaluates cross-scale consistency, sources of variability, and inter-facility reproducibility, providing experimental evidence to assess the reliability of centrifuge modelling for laterally loaded piles.
Joaquin Liaudat; Alexander Kochnev; H. Zachert; Dirk De Lange; Koen Castelein; Suzanne Van Eekelen; Liam Jones; Athanasios Agalianos; Max Sieber; Alexandru Marin; Ioannis Anastasopoulos; Matthieu Blanc; Luc Thorel; William Fernando Ovalle Villamil; Miguel Angel Cabrera; S. Muraro; Shechuan Liu; Stuart Haigh
11th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ICPMG2026)
Session 2: Scaling laws and fundamentals
https://doi.org/10.53243/ICPMG2026-41