Reliability Analysis of Piles under Lateral Load

In this paper, an analytical method for evaluating single piles under lateral loading by stiffness matrix method has been developed in which nonlinear behavior for soil stiffness and flexural stiffness of piles. In this method, the implicit limit state functions are used and the analysis is based on the reliability method. Two types of failures have been investigated in this study, which include lateral displacement of the pile head as well as the maximum bending moment along the pile. The reliability index is evaluated using an algorithm for the first-order reliability method (FORM) and based on the elliptical method using random variables. In this study, spatial variability of soil characteristics is also considered using spatial autocorrelation method. In this research, validation of the results using numerical derivation and comparison with Monte Carlo simulations based on important sampling was done and also sensitivity analysis was conducted too.