ABSTRACT
While piles have been used literally for millennia, many aspects of piling are not to this day modeled with much rigor. Pile installation, particularly in the case of driven piles, cannot yet be simulated accurately, although it is currently a focus of research. Laterally loaded piles are designed using a semi-empirical technique – the p-y method – which is used almost universally. While more meaningful advances have taken place in axially loaded pile analysis, these advances have not been sufficiently integrated with current knowledge of soil mechanics or tied in a fundamental way with the process by which the tens of pile types in existence are installed in the ground. In this paper, we will examine the analytical basis for calculating the ultimate base and shaft resistances of non-displacement piles subjected to axial loads and the pile head settlement for a given applied load.
