Comparision of calculating methods for stress of soil arching effect of piled embankments

The stress concentration ration is an important parameter in the analysis of soil arching effect of piled embankments. The soil arching effect has an important influence in the analysis of load transfer and the embankment settlement. The computational methods for soil arching effect have many differences in assumed conditions and scopes of application. The Terzaghi's and Low's methods are only applicable to 2D situation, the Hewlett & Randolph's and EBGEO 2004's methods are only applicable to 3D situation, and the BS8006's method is applicable to 2D and 3D situations. The differences between basic assumptions of the common soil arching computation effect are discussed, and the applications of different calculation methods are analyzed combined with engineering examples.