BEM analysis of laterally loaded piles in multi-layered transversely isotropic soils

This paper presents a theory for the static analysis of laterally loaded piles embedded in multi-layered transversely isotropic soils. Boundary element method (BEM) is applied to the pile-soil model where the floating pile is modeled as a Bernoulli-Euler beam using the finite difference method and the layered soil is represented utilizing a decoupled analytical layer-element solution as a kernel function for its high accuracy and efficiency. Several numerical examples presented reveal that the pile behavior is affected synthetically by both transverse isotropy and stratified character of soil and the pile's size and physical properties. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.