Effect of Geometrical Properties on Mechanical Behavior of Cantilever Pile Walls (CPW): Centrifuge Tests

Cantilever Pile Wall (CPW) is one of the cost-effective retaining structures supporting excavations. In this study, a series of nine centrifuge tests in 70 g acceleration were conducted to study the influence of different geometrical properties including pile space ratio (S/D; S: pile center to center spacing and D: diameter of the pile) and pile embedment depth ratio (L/H; L: length of the pile and H = excavation depth) on the wall lateral displacement, pile bending moment and backfill settlement. Centrifuge results revealed that a decrease in pile space and an increase in the embedment depth of piles reduced backfill settlements of CPW. The maximum bending moment approximately occurred in the same depth of excavation irrespective of piles' space and embedment ratios. Furthermore, the maximum lateral displacement of CPW considerably decreased as the embedment depth ratio reaches a value of about 1.7. In this regard, increasing the value of L/H from 1.4 to 1.6 led to an impressive decline in wall lateral displacement about 68.7%, but this decline was just 3% while L/H was increased from 1.6 to 2. However, more increase in embedment depth of pile slightly increased the maximum bending moment of the piles. Moreover, the evaluation of these experiments provided a deeper understanding of the behavior of CPW. Additionally, safety factors of CPW models were calculated with conventional slice methods which showed an impressive agreement with centrifuge test results.