Vertically Loaded Single Piles in Gibson Soil

The available closed-form solutions for vertically loaded piles have been, strictly speaking, limited to homogeneous soil, or nonhomogeneous soil with the shear modulus as a power of depth. The latter solutions—based on a zero shear modulus at ground surface—are generally sufficiently accurate for normally consolidated soil. For overconsolidated soil, however, there is generally a nonzero shear modulus at the surface, which may affect pile response. In this note, rigorous closed-form solutions are established to account for the nonhomogeneity of soil profile with nonzero shear modulus at ground surface. The solutions are developed using a load transfer approach, and are shown to give satisfactory results in comparison with a more rigorous continuum-based numerical approach, when the proposed load transfer factors are adopted.