Effect of piled embankments on adjacent piles for bridge abutments

Piled-raft foundations could be employed to transfer loads induced by embankments or surcharges to stiff stratum through soft soil strata and thus to mitigate negative skin friction and lateral pressure on adjacent pile foundations,such as for bridge abutments.Using a simplified method based on Geddes stress solutions as well as 3-dimensional numerical analysis with elastic and elastoplastic constitutive models,the negative skin friction and lateral pressure on the piles of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge due to embankment of Jiaxing Port were evaluated.It was indicated: ① piled embankments could be effectively used to alleviate the influence of embankment or surcharges on adjacent piles;② the simplified method based on Geddes stress solutions could be adopted to assess roughly the negative skin friction and lateral pressure on piles due to adjacent pile foundations compared with the numerical analysis.