Centrifuge modelling of laterally loaded piles in silty sand
Centrifuge modelling of laterally loaded piles in silty sand
Monopiles have been the preferred foundation solution for bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines in the past decades. Already at the early stages of implementation, the traditional API design methodology was found inadequate to capture the responses of large diameter piles to lateral loading. This triggered enormous research efforts, including the development of field tests and numerical modelling to introduce new design methods for lateral pile response embedded in sand or clay. Moreover, centrifuge testing has also been central in establishing a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of soil-pile interaction for monotonic but also cyclic loading. In the present study, the response of rigid piles embedded in silty sand and subjected to lateral loads of high eccentricity is examined. A series of centrifuge tests were carried out for silty sands with different fine content. The reconstituted samples were prepared with the moist tamping method. For every sample, cone penetration tests with pore pressure measurements (CPTU) and laterally loaded pile tests were performed. Hereafter, a correlation between the lateral response of the pile and CPTU measurements is investigated. The homogeneity of the samples and the repeatability of the results are examined. It is shown that both stiffness and ultimate lateral soil resistance of experimentally derived p-y curves are well correlated with the measured cone tip resistance.
Varvara Zania; Irene Rocchi; Efthymios Panagiotis
11th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ICPMG2026)
Session 6: Onshore and offshore foundation systems
https://doi.org/10.53243/ICPMG2026-29