Influence of Constitutive Model on the Mechanical Behavior of a Piled Embankment

A piled embankment is a complex system, consisting of the stratum, the soft soil, the rigid pile, and the load transfer platform. Its behavior is also complex, especially, the arching effect within the load transfer platform and the settlements and the negative skin friction around the pile shaft. The selection of constitutive model for soil is one of the important criteria, it decides the accuracy of the results. In the paper, the influence of constitutive model of embankment on the behavior system is investigated. Two models are considered including the Mohr-Coulomb (MC) model and the CYsoil model. The modified Cam clay model is used for the soft soil. The numerical results compare and evaluate the effectiveness of the two models in simulating the mechanical behavior of a piled embankment in terms of the soil arching effect, the embankment and soft soil settlements and the axial pile force. The numerical results figure out that there is a similarity between the MC and CYsoil numerical results in terms of the arching shape and the stress transmitted to the pile head and the soft soil. The settlement of embankment of MC model is significantly smaller than that of CYsoil model, it is only two-thirds of that of CYsoil model.