Lateral deformation under the side slopes of piled embankments

Piled embankments are widely used for the construction of roads and rails over soft and/or compressible soils. Traditional design methods, such as BS 8006 (1995), assume that the lateral trust is carried by geosynthetic reinforcement placed at the base of the embankment directly over the pile caps. At the extremities of the embankment both horizontal equilibrium and strain compatibility between the different components, the embankment fill, the geosynthetic reinforcement, the pile group and the soft soil, must be achieved (Love and Milligan 2003). This paper examines the horizontal and vertical deformation, axial tension developed in the geosynthetic reinforcement and bending moment/deflection developed in the pile for a range of complex embankment geometries. The piled embankment model (designed to BS 8006: 1995 codes) will enable the examination of the structural performance in terms of horizontal and strain compatibility.