Soil Structure Interaction Analysis of a Dry Dock

KAVITHA P1 , MUTHU VENKATESH M 2, SUNDARAVADIVELU R3

1

Ph.D scholar, Dept. of Ocean Engg., IIT Madras, Chennai 600036, India
Former M.Tech Student, Dept. of Ocean Engg., IIT Madras, Chennai 600036, India
3
Professor, Dept. of Ocean Engg., IIT Madras, Chennai 600036, India
Email: oe13d003@smail.iitm.ac.in, venkateshpearl@gmail.com , rsun@iitm.ac.in

Abstract:
Pile foundation is one of the most popular forms of deep foundations and is widely used for
supporting water front structures in weak soils characterized by low shear strength and high
compressibility and also in good soil formations if structures are subjected to heavy lateral
loadings and moments. The lateral forces are mainly due to berthing forces and lateral earth
pressure due to unstable slope as a result of dredging or siltation etc. Conventionally API
guidelines and Vesic equation are used to analyze the laterally loaded piles. The study of
laterally loaded pile in active soil wedge requires a proper assessment of soil structure interaction
phenomenon involving the interaction between pile surface and the surrounding soil. The
instability of soil wedge can occur due to self weight, surcharge load, dredging, siltation and
earthquake force. The soil structure interaction problem of piles located in active soil wedge has
rarely been approached. Laterally loaded piles are analyzed by methods derived from the
classical beam on elastic foundation mode in which the soil support is approximated by a series
of independent elastic spring. The soil spring constants estimated from API guidelines and Vesic
equations are not suitable for piles located in active soil wedge. Hence a numerical study is
carried out for on dry dock in site specific soil and in dense sand, in order to study the behaviour
of piles in active soil wedge. Based on the P-Y curves plotted for piles located in active soil
wedge, appropriate reduction factor is obtained for API guidelines for dense sand. Profile of the
active soil wedge determined using P-Y curve plots from Plaxis results closely matches with the
theoretical soil slip plane. Soil spring constants are estimated from the modified API curves and
are used to model the dry dock in Staad pro for dense sand in order to validate the results.
Keywords: Dry Dock, Soil Structure Interaction, Soil Spring Constants, Active Soil Wedge, P-Y curves.

1. Introduction
The classic form of dry-dock, properly known as graving dock, is a narrow basin,
surrounded by concrete diaphragm walls, closed by gates or by a caisson, into which a vessel
may be floated and the water pumped out, leaving the vessel supported on blocks. The keel
blocks as well as the bilge block are placed on the floor of the dock in accordance with the
"docking plan" of the ship. Dry-docks are used for the construction, maintenance, and repair of
ships, boats, and other watercraft. The diaphragm wall of dry-dock are generally supported by
group of piles behind them connected via a tie beam. The interaction between soil & structure is
a critical problem in geotechnical engineering. The effect of soil structure interaction becomes
prominent for heavy structures resting on relatively soft soils. Accurate modeling of soilstructure interaction is very important in order to obtain realistic solutions of many foundation
problems. Seismic behavior of a structure is highly influenced not only by the response of the
superstructure, but also by the response of the foundation and the ground as well. The behavior

of pile subjected to lateral load due to excavation induced soli displacement is a classical
example of non linear soil structure interaction. Usually, laterally loaded piles are analyzed by
methods derived directly from the classical beam on elastic foundation mode in which the soil
support is approximated by a series of independent elastic spring.

Fig. 1 Picture of a typical Dry Dock

2. Laterally Loaded Piles In Active Soil Wedge:
Pile foundation is one of the most popular forms of deep foundations and is widely used
for supporting water front structures in weak soils characterized by low shear strength and high
compressibility and also in good soil formations if structures are subjected to heavy lateral
loadings and moments. The permissible deflection at the pile head and the distribution of the
bending moment along the pile are important information for the structural design of pile
foundation that support lateral loads. Estimating the maximum deflection at the pile head is
important to satisfy the serviceability requirement of the superstructure while the bending
moment is required for the structural design of piles and retaining walls. The lateral forces are
mainly due to berthing forces, and lateral earth pressure due to unstable slope as a result of
dredging or siltation etc. The study of laterally loaded pile in active soil wedge requires a proper
assessment of soil-structure interaction phenomenon involving the interaction between pile
surface and the surrounding soil. Slope instability is a common problem in these regions, due to
the low shear values of the sediments. The instability of soil wedge can occur due to, self weight,
surcharge load, dredging, siltation, earthquake force. As a result, failure with large displacements
will take place resulting in lateral forces on piles embedded in such slopes.

Fig.2 Examples of laterally loaded piles located in active soil wedge

Laterally loaded piles can be classified as rigid and flexible depending on length/diameter ratios
and relative stiffness of pile-soil system. In case of rigid piles, failure occurs due to yielding of
soil and it is assumed that the pile rotates as a unit about a point in which the passive resistance
develops in front of the pile above the point of rotation and in the rear portion of the pile below
the point of rotation. However, in case of flexible piles, formation of a plastic hinge takes place
at certain depth below the ground.
3. P-Y Method Of Analysis:
A model describing the P-Y method of analysis is shown in Fig.3. An elevation view of a
pile is shown in Fig.3 (a), with a lateral load Pt an axial load Px, and a moment M applied at the
pile head. The pile is shown as an elastic line in Fig. 3 (b) in a coordinate system with deflection
y and length x along the pile. The rock (soil, usually) is modeled according to the Winkler
concept with a number of nonlinear, discrete mechanisms. The mechanisms, shown in the first
quadrant for convenience, are characterized by a spring and sliding block merely to indicate
nonlinearity, and they are described by the p-y curves in Fig. 3 (c), where p is the resistance of
the rock and y is the local deflection. The parameter p refers to the line load from the rock
resistance and is the integral of the unit stresses acting around the circumference of the pile. A
number of authors have made recommendations for predicting p-y curves for different soils.

Fig 3. Model of Laterally Loaded Pile: (a) Elevation View; (b) As Elastic Line; (c) p-y Curves
4. Plaxis 3D-FEM Tool
The finite element modeling and analysis have been carried out using PLAXIS 3D, a
special tool for solving geotechnical engineering problems.
4.1 Soil Models
Plaxis 3D has inbuilt soil models. The soil domain is generated by by giving bore hole data at
one or more locations. Some of the commonly used soil models are,
Linear Elastic model stress and strain are linearly proportional, no failure condition.
Tensile stresses allowed.
Mohr-Coulomb model Linear elastic until limit state, perfectly plastic. Failure as per
well known c, parameters. Tensile stresses could be limited. Loading and unloading
modulus are the same.
Hardening Soil Model more versatile. MC strength parameters. Different loading and
unloading modulus. Similar to hyperbolic model. Well suited for excavation and dredging
problems. FS analysis possible. Still, not adequate for cyclic/dynamic load analysis.
For the current work, the linearly elastic perfectly plastic, Mohr-Coulomb soil model was
used. The Mohr-Coulomb model requires a total of five parameters, which can be
obtained from basic tests on soil samples. The input parameters with their standard units
are listed below:

:
Unit Weight of soil [kN/m3]

E
:
Youngs modulus
[kN/m2]

:
Poissons ratio
[no unit]

:
Friction angle
[degree]

c
:
Cohesion
[kN/m2]

:
Dilatancy angle
[degree]
4.2 Structural Elements
The other elements except soil can be defined using the different structural elements in
Plaxis like the anchors, geo grid, plate, beam and embedded pile. An embedded pile consists of a
beam element with embedded interface elements to describe the interaction with the soil at the
pile skin and the pile foot. The material parameters of the embedded pile distinguish between the
parameters of the beam and the parameters of the skin resistance and end bearing. The beam
element is defined as linear elastic and material property as regular beam is assigned to it.

Fig 4. Stiffness of embedded interface element at skin of pile

Plate element is used model diaphragm walls, retaining wall, footings etc,. The plate element can
undergo orthotropic material behavior by varying the value of Youngs modulus along x-axis and
y-axis.
4.3 Model Description and Ground Conditions
A uniform soil domain is created in Plaxis using the properties of dense sand given in
table 1. Mohr-Columb model is used and the soil parameters are assigned as given in table.1. The
soil domain is 80m long, 4m wide and 35m deep. The water table is assumed to be at 1m below
G.L. The soil model accommodates diaphragm wall and the three rows of piles behind the wall
connected by tie beam. The excavation is 15.5m deep and is carried out in eight stages and the
whole process is modeled in 9 phase.
Table 1 Soil parameters used for dense sand
Unit Weight, sat
20 kN/m3
Elastic modulus, E
48,000 kN/m2
Angle of internal friction,
36o
Poissons ratio,
0.2
Initial Subgrade modulus, K
21680 kN/m3
The deformed soil mesh and horizontal soil displacement contour are shown in Fig 6.1 & 6.2.
The displacement and bending moment profile of the piles at the end of each phase of analysis is

obtained from Plaxis output.These results were further used to study the Pile-soil interaction,
located in the active wedge zone.

Fig 5. Deformed soil mesh at the end of phase 8

Fig.6 Deformed structure (diaphragm wall and piles)

4.4 Mesh Generation and Convergence Analysis:
The geometry of the soil structure model has to be divided into elements for performing
finite element calculations. PLAXIS allows automatic generation of finite element meshes based
on a robust triangulation procedure, which results in unstructured meshes. These meshes may
look disorderly, but the numerical performance of such meshes is usually better than for regular
(structured) meshes. The mesh generator requires a general meshing parameter, which represents
the average element size (le). In, PLAXIS, this parameter is calculated from the outer geometry
dimensions and a Global coarseness is refined. Distinction is made between five levels of global
coarseness; Very coarse, coarse, medium, fine and very fine. The diaphragm wall is meshed into
6 noded triangular elements with six degree of freedom per node. The embedded pile is defined
as a 3 node special element. Due to existence of the embedded pile, 3 extra nodes are introduced
inside the 10 node tetrahedral soil element. This set of 3 node beam element into a 10 node
tetrahedral element is analyzed as one unit to get the pile-soil interaction. Beams are composed
of beam elements with three degrees of freedom per node: Two translational degrees of freedom
(ux and uy) and one rotational degree of freedom (rotation in the x-y plane: z). Bending
moments and axial forces are evaluated from the stresses at the stress points.
The soil domain must be fixed such that there is no influence of the excavation on the soil
outside the domain. The soil domain considered was 80m long, 6m wide and 30m deep. Mesh
convergence was done by varying the mesh type from very coarse to very fine and the variation
in the bending moment profile of the diaphragm wall was studied. The variation in the meshing
type largely affected the bending moment value at the propped support which is plotted in the
chart below.
Table 2: Comparison of various types of mesh in Plaxis 3D
MESH
NO.OF
NO.OF
RELATIVE
TYPE
Very coarse
Coarse
Medium
Fine
Very fine

ELEMENTS
1454
3164
6142
11087
23272

NODES
3049
5767
10333
17976
36220

SIZE FACTOR
2
1.5
1
0.7
0.5

4.5 Load Stepping Procedures:

When soil plasticity is involved in finite element calculation the equation become nonlinear, which means that the problem needs to be solved in a series of calculations steps. During
each calculation step, the equilibrium errors in the solution are successively reduced using a
series of iterations. The iteration procedure is based on an accelerated initial stress method. If the
calculation step is of a suitable size then the number of iterations required for equilibrium will be
relatively small, usually about five to ten. If the step size is too small, then many steps are
required to reach the desired load level and computer time will be excessive.

0
-0.25

Phase 1

-0.2

-0.15

-0.1

-0.05

-5
Phase 3

Phase 2

-10
Depth Z (m)
Phase 4

Phase 5

Phase 6
-15

Phase 7

-20

Phase 8

Displacement Ux (m)

Fig 7. Displacement of pile 1 after each phase of excavation

0
-3000 -2500 -2000 -1500 -1000 -500

Phase 1

Phase 2

0
-5

500

Phase 3

-10
Depth Z (m)
Phase 4

Phase 5

Phase 6
-15

Phase 7

Phase 8

-20

Bending moment Mz(kNm)

Fig 8. Bending moment of pile 1 after each phase of excavation

5. STAAD PRO Model

In STAAD PRO, the structure is modeled as RCC moment resisting frame. Beam
elements were used to model the diaphragm wall, piles and tie beam which are interconnected by
nodes. The soil springs are used to idealize the soil support for pile. The soil is modeled as elastic
spring supports spaced at 1 m c/c. The spring constants are estimated using modulus of sub-grade
reaction, Ks. The lateral Earth pressure and water pressure were estimated theoretically and are
directly applied on the diaphragm wall as linearly varying load. The failure plane of soil is
assumed linear, inclined at an angle to the horizontal.
5.1 Soil Spring Stiffness Estimation:
Vesic equation (Bowels 4th Edition) is used for the determination of modulus of sub-grade
reaction and Newmarks distribution is used for the spring stiffness. Modulus of subgrade
reaction ks is determined using the following equation
Es B 4 Es
0.65

ks
12

B
E p I p 1 s 2
(5.1)
Based on Newmarks distribution the spring stiffness is given as follows.
Bl
7 k n 6k n1 k n 2
24
First spring
-

Intermediate spring

Bottom spring
Where,
B
Es,Ep
Ip
l
kn

Bl
k n1 10k n k n1
12

Bl
7 k n 6k n1 k n2
24

Width of Pile/disphragm wall

Youngs modulus of Soil and Pile
Moment of inertia of Pile
Spacing between two adjacent springs
Modulus of subgrade reaction of nth spring

(5.2)

(5.3)

(5.4)

Fig.9 Isometric view dry dock frame showing differential water pressure load
6. Results and Discussion:
Comparison of results from Plaxis and Staad pro(Vesic equation) are presented in the following
charts:

The results of displacement and bending moment profile from Plaxis 3D and Staad pro
for the diaphragm wall and piles are compared. Staad pro model, where the soil spring stiffness
is calculated from Vesic equation is very rigid at the bottom and is over estimating bending
moment in the structure. Conventional vesic method of estimating soil spring stiffness is not
applicable of piles located in active soil wedge as the lateral soil resistance is very less along the
wedge profile. Hence an alternated method of estimating the soil spring stiffness need to
developed in order to solve the SSI problem of Piles located in active soil wedge.
6.1 Plotting P-Y Curves from PLAXIS Results:

The soil resistance (P) along the pile shaft is determined from the bending moment
obtained from Plaxis output, using an approach followed by Yang et al. (2005) and Dunnavant
(1986). The bending moment curve of the pile shaft is curve fitted by a cubic polynomial
function,
M (Z) = aZ3 + bZ2 + cZ + d
(6.1)
Where, Z is the depth and a, b, c and d are constants obtained from curve-fitting process
Then distribution of soil resistance along pile shaft is obtained by double differentiating the
above equation.
P (Z) = - (d2M/dZ2) = - (6aZ + 2b)
(6.2)
From the equation 6.2 soil resistance (P) is calculated along pile shaft at 2m interval and is
plotted against the corresponding pile displacement at end of each phase. Thus a family of P-Y
curves was plotted for each pile at 2m spacing.
120
110
100
90
80
70
60
Soil resistance P (kN)
50
-14m
-15m
-16m
-18m
40
30
20
10
0
0.02 0.04
-10 0

-20m

0.06

0.08

-22m

0.1

0.12

-24m

0.14

Pile displacement Y (m)

Fig 6.11 Family of P-Y curves for pile 1 at every 2m depth

6.2 ESTIMATION OF REDUCTION FACTOR FOR API GUIDELINES:
The lateral soil resistance-deflection (P-Y) relationships for piles in sandy soil at any specific
depth Z can be plotted using the API guidelines given below.
kL

P A P u tanh
Y
A P u

(6.3)
Where,
Pu is ultimate lateral bearing capacity of soil at any depth Z,

Pu= (C1Z + C2 D) Z

C1, C2, C3 are empirical constants based on

or

C3*D Z (kN/m)

(6.4)

D- Pile/D-wall thickness

K- initial modulus of subgrades reaction (kN/m3 )

A- factor to account for cyclic or static loading condition.

A= (3-0.8Z/D) > 0.9 for static loading

In order to account for the reduction in lateral resistance of soil for piles located in active soil
wedge a reduction factor R is introduced in the API guidelines as given below
Modified API formula
Rk L

P A R p u tanh
Y
A pu

(6.5)
By trial and error method the value of the reduction factor is fixed such that the P-Y
curve obtained from the modified API formula fits with the one plotted using Plaxis at
appropriate depth.
By studying the P-Y curves plotted for each piles and the table for reduction factor, it can be seen
that the active soil wedge plane passes through the pile 1 at -14m depth and touches the surface
just in front of pile 2. According the plane of active soil wedge (soil slip plane) is drawn and
compared with the theoretical soil slip plane in Fig 6.21

Fig 6.14 Theoretical and actual soil slip plane (active wedge)

7. Conclusion
Based on the above work the following conclusions were drawn:
The soil spring constants estimated from API guidelines and Vesic equations is not
suitable for piles located in active soil wedge.

Hence proper reduction factor are introduced to modify the API guidelines P-Y curves of
pile in sandy soil.

Based on the values of reduction factors obtained it is concluded that the effect of active
soil wedge decreases with increase in distance from the crest of the wedge.

Profile of the active soil wedge determined using P-Y curve plots from Plaxis results
closely matches with the theoretical soil slip plane.

The soil spring constants estimated from modified P-Y curves gave realistic solutions for
Soil-Pile Interaction problem in active soil wedge compared to that of API and Vesic
equation.

8. References
Dhruba Lal Pradhan (2012), Development of P-Y Curves for Monopiles in Clay using
Finite Element Model Plaxis 3D Foundation, Master of science thesis, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology.

Ke Yang and Robert Liang (2014), Methods for Deriving p-y Curves from Instrumented
Lateral Load Tests, Geotechnical Testing Journal, Vol. 30

Muthukkumaram K (2004), Non-linear Soil Structure Interaction of Piles on Sloping

Ground, Doctoral of Philosophy thesis, IIT madras-Chennai

Lymon C. Reese (1997), Analysis of Laterally Loaded Piles in Weak Rock, Journal of
Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.

Jayantha Kodikara et all (2010), Theoretical p-y Curves for Laterally Loaded Single
Piles in
Undrained Clay Using Bezier Curves, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental
Engineering, ASCE.

T. Y. Poh, et all (1997), Performance of Two Propped Diaphragm Walls in Stiff Residual
Soil, Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities.

H. G. Poulos and L. T. Chen (1997), Pile Response due to Excavation-Induced Lateral

Soil Movement, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, ASCE.
Prof Antonio Gens et all (2013), Plaxis Advanced Cource on Computational
Ceotechnics, Chennai
American Petroleum Institute (API RP 2A), Recommended Practice for Planning,
Degigning and Constructing Fixed Offshore Platforms.