P-Y CURVES FOR SINGLE PILES IN FINE SOILS FROM THE PREBORED PRESSUREMETER - A NEW APPROACH

The pressuremeter test (PMT) is a commonly used in-situ test for pile foundations design. Thorough analysis of full-scale lateral loading tests of instrumented piles in fine soils led to the construction of experimental load-transfer P-Y curves and to correlate them with the PMT parameters, namely the pressuremeter modulus EM and the soil limit pressure Pi. The P-Y curve parameters were found to be function of the lateral pile/soil stiffness ratio and the PMT parameters. The predictive capability of the proposed method was demonstrated by comparing the predicted load-deflection curves of piles to the ones obtained from full-scale lateral loading tests in fine soils.