Effect of slope on bearing capacity of laterally loaded pile based on asymmetric failure mode

An asymmetric failure mode of soil in front of laterally loaded piles at the slope crest is presented to estimate the pile bearing capacity in this study. The effect of soil shear strength below the rotation center is taken into account by postulating the suppositional sliding curve and corresponding mobilization coefficient of soil strength. Subsequently, the soil resistances above the rotation center at soil failure can be obtained by upper bound theorem of limit analysis. Employing static equilibrium equations, the analytical solution of lateral bearing capacity of piles is assessed by adopting the concept of effective embedment depth. The analytical solution, considering the the slope effect on limiting force profile, is then validated by numerical predictions and full-scale tests. Furthermore, a non-dimensional coefficient, capacity ratio, is proposed to characterize the slope effect on the bearing capacity of laterally loaded piles, and the range of capacity ratio for different internal friction angles are differentiated as different distribution areas. The effect of distance between the pile and slope crest on pile bearing capacity is further investigated, and the capacity ratios appear to be approximatively linear with normalized distance lambda and would increase to 1 until lambda exceeds the critical value.