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P-Y CURVES FOR SINGLE PILES IN FINE SOILS FROM THE PREBORED
PRESSUREMETER – A NEW APPROACH

Conference Paper · May 2011

DOI: 10.1142/9789814365161_0075

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 P-Y CURVES FOR SINGLE PILES IN FINE SOILS FROM THE PREBORED
PRESSUREMETER- A NEW APPROACH

Ali Bouafia
University of Blida Faculty of Engineering Department of civil engineering
P.O. Box: 270 R. P. Blida 09000 Algeria
E-mail: bouafia@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The pressuremeter test (PMT) is a commonly used in-situ test for pile foundations design. Thorough
analysis of full-scale lateral loading tests of instrumented piles in fine soils led to the construction of
experimental load-transfer P-Y curves and to correlate them with the PMT parameters, namely the
pressuremeter modulus EM and the soil limit pressure Pl.
The P-Y curve parameters were found to be function of the lateral pile/soil stiffness ratio and the
PMT parameters. The predictive capability of the proposed method was demonstrated by comparing
the predicted load-deflection curves of piles to the ones obtained from full-scale lateral loading tests in
fine soils.

BACKGROUND

In some situations, lateral load-deflection behaviour of pile foundations is a key parameter in its
design and analysis. The lateral response of a pile/soil system is more complex than the axial one,
because the former involves a 3D pile/soil interaction and a variety of parameters like the relative
pile/soil stiffness. However, an important development in the understanding of the lateral response
mechanism of the piles was achieved during the last half century and several methods were proposed.
The full-scale lateral loading tests are increasingly used within the scope of research programs or
pile foundations projects. The load-transfer P-Y curves describe a simple relationship between the soil
reaction P and the corresponding pile deflection Y at the same depth. As illustrated in figure 1, these
curves are non linear shaped and may be defined at each depth along the pile, which enables to
account for the non-linear response of the surrounding soil as well as for the non homogeneity of soil
properties and therefore offers more realistic analysis of the pile response.
The aim of this paper is at presenting a new approach of P-Y curves based design approach using
the PMT data. This approach was developped on the basis of the interpretation of 16 instrumented
full-scale piles submitted to lateral loading tests in fine soils. The experimental sites are located in
France and consisted of 3 clayey soils (Sites S3, S4 and S5) and 1 silty soil (Site S6).
Site S3 is located in Bagnolet, 8 km north east of Paris and belongs to the Sannoisien deposit. The
soil material is composed of a plastic saturated green layer of clay thick of 8 to 11 m (Kerisel and Adam,
1967).
Site S4 is located in Sallèdes, 24 km south east of Clermont-Ferrand and belongs to the Stampien
sedimentary deposit. The soil material is composed of a plastic layer of clay thick of 6.5 m in the
vicinity of the test piles, overlying a blue soft to hard layer of marl (Pouget, 1988).
Site S5 is located in the Highway A62 in Cubzac-les-ponts, 10 km north east of Bordeaux. The soil
material is composed of high plastic clayey layer thick of 2 m, overlying a grey layer of organic clay
thick of 19 m, then a deep layer of the Sannoisien marl (Ambrosino et al, 1973).
Site S6 is located in the Orly airport, 15 km south of Paris. The soil is composed of a layer of
saturated stiff yellow silt thick of 6 to 8 m and overlying a deep layer of marl (Adam and Lejay, 1971).
All the piles are steel pipes or Larssen caissons instrumented by pairs of strain gauges distributed
along two diametrically opposite axes which allowed determination of the bending moment profiles
for a given lateral load. Piles of site S5 were bored and the other ones were jacked into the soil.
The experimental bending moment curves along each pile were interpreted by double
differentiation to obtain the soil reaction P and by double integration to obtain the pile deflection Y at
a given depth.
Since the soil reaction, geometrically speaking, represents the curvature of bending moment
distribution, it is therefore very sensitive to any variation of bending moment at a given depth and
strongly depends on the choice of the fitting curve of bending moment (Bouafia, 1990), (King, 1994).
Quintic spline functions or polynomial functions were used to fit the bending moment distribution.
The fitting function was chosen according to the criterion of static equilibrium of the test pile under
lateral reaction profile P(z) and the loads on the pile top within a given tolerance (Bouafia, 2002).
The experimental P-Y curves so built were hyperbolic shaped and can be described by the following
equation (Bouafia, 2007):

y
P= (1)
1 Y
+
Eti Pu

As illustrated in figure 1, Eti is the initial lateral subgrade modulus and Pu is the lateral soil resistance.
These parameters were correlated to the PMT data, namely EM and Pl. Figure 2 illustrates a typical
experimental P-Y curve.

ANALYSIS OF THE P-Y CURVE PARAMETERS

A key parameter in the lateral pile/soil interaction is the pile/soil stiffness ratio Kr defined as:

E p .I p
Kr = (2)
Ec .De4

Ec is the characteristic deformation modulus defined as an average value of the PMT modulus along
the pile:

1
D (3)
Ec = ∫ Em ( z )dz
D0

D is the embedded length of the pile and De is the effective embedded length of the pile, beyond
which the pile segments do not deflect. It is computed as:

De = min{D, πL0} (4)

The elastic length (or the transfer length) L0 is given by:

EpI p
L0 = 4 (5)
Etic

Etic is the lateral reaction modulus of the equivalent homogeneous soil (or the average lateral reaction
modulus) given by:

D
1
E = ∫ Eti ( z )dz
c
ti (6)
D0
 Figure 1. Typical shape of the P-Y curve

300
Site: Bagnolet
Pile: D D=2.50m e=1.10 m
200
Z/B=0.00
Z/B=0.42
Soil reaction P (kN/m)

100 Z/B=0.83
Z/B=1.25
0 Z/B=1.66
Z/B=2.08
Z/B=2.50
-100 Z/B=2.92
Z/B=3.33
-200 Z/B=3.75
Z/B=4.16
-300

-400
-30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30
Deflection Y (mm)

Figure 2. Typical experimental P-Y curve

At a given depth z, the lateral reaction modulus Eti was found depending on the lateral pile/soil
stiffness ratio Kr as well as on the PMT modulus EM such as:

Eti = K E EM (7)

KE is the modulus number varying as a power function on Kr:

K E = a (K r ) (8)
b

The lateral soil resistance Pu was found depending on Kr and the net limit lateral pressure Pl*, such
as:

Pu = K s Pl * B (9)

Ks is the lateral resistance factor depending on the pile/soil stiffness ratio Kr as:

K s = c + d (K r ) (10)
e
 The net limit lateral pressure Pl* is defined as:

pl* ( z ) = pl ( z ) − P0 ( z ) (11)

Pl is the limit lateral pressure measured by the PMT and P0 is the at-rest total horizontal overburden
stress. B is the pile diameter (or the pile width, perpendicular to the load direction).
The coefficients a through e of the equations 8 and 10 are summarised in table 1 depending on the
nature of soil. It is to be noticed that during the interpretation of the experimental results, those of the
short piles, namely whose slenderness ratio D/B is greater or equal to 5 did not fit the equations 8 and
10. The proposed method is therefore limited to the piles where D/B is greater than 5.
As shown in table 1, in clayey soils KE decreases with the pile-soil stiffness ratio Kr. It therefore
may be concluded that in a given clayey soil, according to equation 7, a stiffer pile/soil system
behaves with a less lateral subgrade reaction modulus and then exhibits more pile deflections at small
lateral loads.
However, the factor Ks increases with Kr which results in increasing the lateral soil resistance,
according to equation 9. In other words, in a given clayey soil, a stiffer pile/soil system is
characterised by a greater limit lateral load at large pile deflections.

METHODOLOGY OF COMPUTATION

The following step-by-step procedure helps using the method to define the P-Y curves parameters:

1. Subdivide the soil along the pile into N horizontal slices enough thin so that the PMT data (Em, Pl)
may be considered varying linearly within any slice. The value of any of these parameters at the mid-
slice is then considered as representative within the slice.

2. Compute the characteristic soil modulus Ec by equations 3. For practical purposes, replace the
integration formula by that of the summation of trapezes.

3. Compute the lateral stiffness ratio Kr according to equation 2 by assuming first that the effective
embedded length De equal to D (rigid or semi-rigid pile).

4. Compute Eti(z) at the mid-segments of the pile according to equations 7 and 8.

5. Compute Pu(z) at the mid-segments of the pile according to equations 9 and 10.

6. Compute Etic according to equation 6.

7. Compute the transfer length L0 by the equation 5.

8. Compute the effective embedded length De of the pile based on equation 4.

9. If L0 leads to D>De (flexible pile), use equation 2 and recompute Kr. The iterative process continues
until convergence of Kr.

10. Use a PC software to analyze the load-deflection response of the pile on the basis of P-Y curves
method. Many softwares are available like SPULL developed by the University of Blida. This latter is
freely distributed by sending an E-mail to the author.
 Table 1. Values of coefficients a to e

Soil a b c d e
Clay 1.84 -0.20 0.30 1.00 1.00
Silt 1.70 0.00 0.00 1.15 0.00
Organic clay 3.70 0.00 0.00 0.14 0.00

VALIDATION OF THE SUGGESTED METHOD

Lateral load-deflection response of a case study reported in the literature was predicted. The test
pile is a closed ended steel pipe with a diameter of 0.32 m, an embedded length of 12.2 m, a flexural
stiffness of 35 MNm2. The soil is located at Lake Austin and composed of clayey layer characterized
by the average PMT parameters: EM=2.6 MPa, Pl=200 kPa.
Figure 3 shows a reasonable agreement between the predicted and the experimental load-deflection
curves. The results of predictions are encouraging seeing the multitude of approximations made during
the process of definition of the method.

100

80

60 Site: Lake Austin

H (kN)

Date : 1956
D=12,2 m B=0,324 m
40

measured
20
Predicted

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Y0 (mm)
Figure 3. Comparison of predicted and measured deflections in clay

CONCLUSION

The analysis of full-scale lateral loading tests carried out on instrumented piles in fine soils in
France led to the definition of hyperbolic load-transfer P-Y curves in correlation with the PMT data.
It was shown the lateral soil reaction modulus and the lateral soil resistance were correlated to the
lateral pile/soil stiffness ratio and the parameters measured during the PMT test (PMT modulus and
soil limit pressure). For piles whose slenderness ratio is equal or greater than 5, the modulus number
and the lateral resistance factor were defined as functions of the pile/soil stiffness ratio.
A step-by-step methodology was presented to define the parameters of P-Y curves for single pile
under lateral loading in fine soils.
The suggested method was assessed by predicting the load-deflection response of a single pile
driven into a clayey soil. Comparison of the predicted deflections to the measured ones showed
reasonable prediction capability of the proposed pile/soil stiffness dependant P-Y curves method.
 REFERENCES

1. Adam, M and Lejay, J, (1971) "Etude des pieux sollicités horizontalement- Détermination du module de
réaction dans un sol donné (in French: Study of the horizontally loaded piles- determination of the subgrade
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2. Ambrosino, R., Bru, J-P and Ledoux, J-L, (1973) "Comportement d’un pieu sollicité horizontalement (in
French: Bheviour of a laterally loaded pile)", Journal Bulletin des LPC N° 67, pp : 151-167, Paris.

3. Bouafia, A, (1990) "Modélisation des pieux chargés latéralement en centrifugeuse (in French: Centrifuge
modelling of laterally loaded piles)", Ph.D Thesis of the University of Nantes, France, 267 p.

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