Centrifuge modeling of pile-soil-pile interaction considering relative density and toe condition

In a group of installed piles, the stresses applied from one pile to soil may haveoverlaps with another pile which leads to the changes in bearing capacity and settlementof each individual pile. in order to predict the performance of those piles, interactioncoecients, based on elasticity theory proposed by mindlin, are widely applied. in thispaper, the eect of soil relative density and also toe condition on the interaction betweentwo similar piles in sandy soil is presented using centrifuge modeling. to achieve thisobjective, 22 tests have been conducted to investigate the eect of soil relative densityand another 11 tests were performed to study the contribution of pile toe and shaft in theinteractions. the results showed that the value of soil relative density has an importantrole in the coecient of interaction which has not been considered in previously reportedcorrelations. for this reason a modication has been proposed for the randolph andwroth equation to consider soil relative density. accuracy prediction of the new modelwas compared with the randolph and wroth equation with the aid of dierent statisticalparameters. this comparison indicated the superiority of the proposed model over previousmethods.