Numerical Analysis of Steel Pile Tension Capacity in Layered Soils Using Hypoplastic Contact Modelling

Volume Title: ICASGE2025

Paper ID : 1051-ICASGE-FULL

¹Hamburg University of Technology Institute of Geotechnical Engineering and Construction Management

²Harburger Schloßstraße 36

This study investigates the tensile load-bearing capacity of steel-driven piles in finely layered soils through numerical simulations. A high-quality hypoplastic contact model is employed to accurately capture the complex pile-soil interaction. While initial simulations based on hypoplastic constitutive models for the soil and a simple Coulomb friction model for the contact showed reasonable agreement with field measurements, the hypoplastic contact model demonstrated superior performance by accounting for critical factors such as barotropy, pycnotropy, and surface roughness effects. Results highlight the limitations of the Coulomb friction model in predicting pull-out behaviour and underscore the significant accuracy gains achieved with the hypoplastic approach. A detailed comparison with field data quantifies these improvements, demonstrating that a holistic representation of tension pile behaviour requires the use of a high-quality hypoplastic contact model. This study provides valuable insights into the numerical modelling of tension piles in layered soils and underscores the importance of sophisticated contact models for reliable geotechnical predictions in complex and heterogeneous soil conditions.

Tension Piles; Hypoplastic Contact Model; Finite element analysis; Soil-Structure Interaction; Layered Soils; Pull-out Capacity

Geotechnical Engineering (GEO)