Abstract: Lateral soil movement induced by excavation or tunneling might adversely affect any nearby pile foundation systems.In this paper,a simple analysis solution was outlined for computing the lateral response of passive pile groups subjected to urban underground excavation.Based on a two-stage method,nonlinear analysis with a Winkler model was adopted to study the effect of pile-soil interaction,combined with finite difference method in the case of multi-layered soils.A specified free-field soil movement profile was used as an input.Then,the governing equation of group piles was obtained considering the shielding effect in pile groups by the simplified Mindlin’s equation.Comparisons were made among the behaviors obtained from boundary-element analysis,in-situ observations,centrifuge model tests and those computed by the proposed finite difference method.Generally,a satisfactory prediction of the lateral response of passive pile groups could be given by the proposed method.