Analytical and Experimental Studies of Steel H-Pile Connection to the Integral Bridge Abutments under Lateral Loads

Integral bridges are jointless bridges that typically are constructed with flexible foundations which include one row of steel H piles. Because the main criterion limiting the length of integral bridges is the lateral displacement capacity of their supporting piles, longer integral bridges can be built by increasing that capacity. Detailing and the embedded length of pile inside the abutment of the bridges have a key role to provide shear and flexural resistance of pile - abutment connections. In this paper, first, a theoretical method was developed by authors to calculate the required embedded length of the pile, based on the plastic moment of the steel pile. Then, to evaluate the efficiency of proposed theoretical method, two specimens of pile-abutment connections were constructed with different embedded lengths of pile inside the abutment. The results of the experiment in conjunction with numerical and analytical studies showed that by increasing the embedded length less than the proposed method to the value of more than the proposed method increased the flexural capacity of the joint up to 100%.