Analysis of laterally loaded pile groups in multilayered elastic soil

The paper presents a semi-analytical method of calculating the response of a pile group. The approach is based on tying the displacement at any point of the soil mass around a pile or group of piles to the displacements experienced by the piles themselves. This is done by multiplying the pile displacements by decay functions. Application of the principle of minimum potential energy and calculus of variations to the resulting displacement field formulation leads to the differential equations for the soil and piles. Solution of these differential equations using finite differences and the method of eigenvectors leads to the desired displacement field in the soil and deflection profiles of the piles. The method produces displacement fields that are very close to those produced by the finite element method at a fraction of the cost. To illustrate the ease of application of the method, it is then used to prepare pile group efficiency charts for some typical soil modulus profiles.