Determination of failure mechanism of very soft clay behind L-pile wall with physical model tests

抄録

This paper presents the determination of flow failure mechanism of very soft marine clay behind contiguous L-pile, (LP) wall with physical model tests. The pile with L-shape is model by applying pressure on pile-soil reduced scaled tests. The plane strain type is considered. One side of the model is transparent to observed movement of the soil and failure pattern during the test. The undisturbed very soft clay sample is collected, prepared, and tested near the site to obtain high quality undisturbed samples. The results indicated that the normalized ultimate pressure with undrained shear strength, Ph/Su reduces as the gap width increase. The relationship between Ph/Su and normalized gap width, sg/B, is proposed. The arch failure mechanism is observed from the recorded photographs. The ultimate resistances of LP are lower than the circular pile due to span length of arch over the open gap.