Calculation of Vertical Bearing Capacity of Piles with Consideration of Nonlinear Characteristic of Load Transfer

Based on existing methods for evaluating the vertical bearing capacity of pile,a hyperbola model was used to describe the shaft resistance of pile with consideration of the nonlinear behavior of load transfer along the pile length.Meanwhile,for reflecting the influence of sediment at the pile tip on the bearing capacity during the pile construction,a three-broken-line model was used to represent the resistance at pile tip.In consideration of the nonlinear characteristic of load transfer,the differential equation for the vertical bearing capacity of piles was established and its relative solution was obtained by using power series method to describe the characteristic of the layered stratum and the pile-soil interaction.The result of an engineering case study indicate that the calculated p-s curve agrees well with the measured value when the hyperbola model was used to fit the test data of shaft shear force and the relative displacement,which shows the rationality and feasibility of the presented method.