ABSTRACT
In a previous study (Engin et al., 2007), it is verified that depending on the mesh size, different failure curves (i.e. different pile displacements and/or load capacities) are obtained for a defined pile capacity. It is normal to have a softer behavior when using smaller mesh size in finite element analyses. However, in very fine and fine mesh cases the soil fails before the pile bearing capacity is reached. This is due to the fact that when there are small soil elements around embedded pile, there are elements that actually are in the “pile region”. Embedding the sub-pile to only one adjacent soil element will lead to local behavior which suffers from the element size effect; the smaller the element, the stronger the local effect.
