Efficiency of Piles Stabilizing Slopes in Fine-Grained Soils

Equally spaced piles can be designed to ensure the stability of a slope with a desired safety factor or to restrain slow slope movements to prevent damage to existing structures. The piles are usually arranged in lines installed transversally to soil movements or in groups of limited extension in a plan according to their stabilizing or protective function. A numerical study has been performed to analyze the role of some design parameters in the efficiency of equally spaced piles, adopting two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) finite-difference (FD) models. Plane strain models have been used to study the soil arching mechanism and the associated stress transfer from the yielding soil to the stabilizing piles, while 3D numerical analyses have been performed to evaluate the efficiency of pile groups. The effect of varying pile spacing, pile embedded length, soil mechanical properties, and sloping ground conditions have been investigated for two-layer slopes assuming fixed or unconstrained piles. The outcomes of the parametric study made it possible to derive a simple analytical relationship to quantify the resisting contribution provided by the piles in an infinite slope. The paper shows that the proposed approach, even though limited to the ranges of the adopted parameters, can be used for a preliminary design of stabilizing piles to ensure the desired increase in the slope safety factor, as well as to achieve the desired reduction of downhill slope movements.