Numerical analysis of laterally loaded barrette foundation

The effect of soil constitutive models, nonlinearity of the barrette material, loading direction as well as the cross-sectional shape and second moment of inertia on the response the barrette foundation under lateral loading is investigated in this research. The numerical analyses were conducted on a well-documented barrette load test using Plaxis 3D. The investigation results revealed that the response of the barrette is significantly affected by the direction of the applied load and nonlinear behavior of the soil and barrette materials. For rectangular, square, and circular piles with different cross-section areas and same second moment of inertia, the square and circular piles exhibit similar behavior but different from that of the rectangular pile. However, when these piles have the same cross-section area and different second moments of inertia, the behavior of rectangular pile is close to that of square pile when the load is applied along the x direction and is close to that of circular pile shape when the load is applied along the y direction.