A Numerical Model of Lateral Response of a Drilled Shaft

adjacent to a Caisson Foundation

L. Wei & D. Ha
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Boston, MA, USA
S. Patel
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Clark, NJ, USA

ABSTRACT: Currently the p-y method is widely used in industry to model the pile behavior
under lateral loads. Appropriate p-multipliers and y-multipliers are usually applied to the “back-
bone” p-y curves in order to account for group effect or any other possible influence on the pile
lateral behavior. At Piers 76 and 77 of Pulaski Skyway, deep foundations with groups of drilled
shafts are proposed to replace the existing caisson foundations. The existing caisson foundations
will be left in place and hence may influence the drilled shaft behavior. In this study, a numeri-
cal model was developed to investigate the possible effect on drilled shaft lateral behavior due
to the existing caisson. A 2D analysis was performed using the commercial finite difference
program FLAC. A plain strain condition was assumed in a homogenous soil layer and a lateral
force was acted on the shaft towards the caisson. The lateral response behavior was evaluated in
both soft clay and medium stiff clay. The effect of interface roughness (rough or smooth) be-
tween shaft-soil and caisson-soil were also investigated. First, the lateral behavior of drilled
shaft was calibrated with the “backbone” p-y curves. Next, the p-y curves were compared be-
tween “with caisson” and “without caisson” conditions. It is found that the soils exhibit a slight-
ly stiffer behavior at small shaft deflections with the caisson presence, particularly for a rough
soil-structure interface. However, the soil ultimate resistance may be lower with the caisson
than without the caisson, particularly for a smooth soil-structure interface. It is also observed
that the displacement level to fully mobilize the soil resistance with the caisson is significantly
less than that required to fully mobilize the resistance without the caisson. For a full-range p-y
curve, therefore it may be necessary to apply both p and y multipliers. Nevertheless, for a ser-
vice condition that the shaft deflection is small (e.g. less than 2.5 cm), such effect is minor and
the “backbone” p-y curves may still be applicable with the caisson presence.

1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Project Background
The Pulaski Skyway is a vital link in the Northern New Jersey/New York Metropolitan transpor-
tation network, carrying over 67,000 vehicles a day. The Skyway has been in operation for ap-
proximately 80 years and is near its project useful life. The goal of the current ongoing project is
to rehabilitate the Skyway; address the existing structural deficiencies along the nearly 5793 m
of this structure; make safety improvements where possible; and achieve a life expectancy of at
least 75 years before another major rehabilitation is necessary. See Figure 1 for photo of the Pu-
laski Skyway.
As part of the rehabilitation design effort, a comprehensive coring and testing program re-
vealed that the pier and foundation concrete is in a severely deteriorated condition, thus warrant-
ing replacement of the piers/foundations in lieu of repairing them. It was accepted that new con-
struction would be the best way to provide the expected 75 year service life required for the
rehabilitated structure. Many of the pier columns are being replaced with a new reinforced con-
crete shell, which would be isolated from the existing pier columns. The new foundations will
involve a new pile cap and drilled shafts over and outside the limits of the existing caisson foun-
dation, some of which are 24 m long, 9 m wide and 30 m deep, and are to remain.

Location of Piers 76/77

Figure 1. Aerial photo of the Pulaski Skyway (looking east)

1.2 Purpose of Study

At Piers 76 and 77 of Pulaski Skyway, deep foundations with groups of drilled shafts are pro-
posed to replace the existing caisson foundations. However, the existing caisson will remain and
loads it previously carried from the pier columns will be removed and transferred to the new
deep foundations. The distance between the edge of the caisson and the center of drilled shaft is
1.45 m in the bridge longitudinal direction. The proposed drilled shaft is 1.52 m in diameter, so
the caisson-to-shaft distance (caisson edge to shaft center) is slightly less than 1D (D is the
drilled shaft diameter). The caisson is about 18.3 m long and 7.0 m wide, extending all the way
to the top of bedrock. The anticipated lateral response of the proposed drilled shaft may be af-
fected by the adjacent existing caisson. Figures 2a and 2b shows an existing photo of the exist-
ing Pier 76 and 77. Figure 3 shows a sketch of the proposed foundation for Pier 77.
The purpose of this study is to simulate the drilled shaft lateral behavior due to the adjacent
caisson effect. Currently the p-y method is widely used in industry to model the pile behavior
under lateral loads. Therefore, this numerical model is created to capture the soil-pile interac-
tions in terms of p-y curves with the caisson nearby. It is anticipated that the original p-y curves
(the condition without caisson effect) may need to be modified based on the numerical modeling
results to account for the caisson effect.

Figure 2a. Pier 76 Figure 2b. Pier 77

 Existing Caisson
Proposed Drilled
Shaft (typ)

Figure 3. Proposed Foundation Plan/Elevation for Pier 77 (Pier 76 Similar)

2 SUBSURFACE CONDITIONS
2.1 Geology
Based on surface geology maps of New Jersey, the Pulaski Skyway lies entirely within the
Piedmont Plateau subdivision of the Appalachian geographic province. The surface geology
primarily consists of man-made fill overlies marine tidal marsh and estuarine deposits contain-
ing brown to black deposits vary from sand to clay with minor amounts of gravel and contain
abundant organic material. Where not overlain by man-made fill, the marine tidal marsh
typically consists of 0.6 to 1.5 m of organic soil followed by stratified silty clays and clays.
These silty and clayey soils are usually highly compressible with low densities (PB, 2013).
2.2 Soil Stratigraphy
Numerous borings and cone penetration tests (CPTs) were performed in the vicinity of the pro-
posed piers (Arora, 2017). The soils at the site generally have a fill layer about 3.0 m below
grade overlying a soft to very soft organic clay layer with an approximate thickness of 3.0 m.
Below the organic layer are the soft to medium stiff silty clays extending more than 30 m below
grade. This thick silty clay layer is notably varved with fine-grained sand and silt (PB, 2013).
Loose to medium dense sand layers are also encountered at varying depths at some of the boring
locations and the thickness is usually less than 2.7 m. Below the thick varved silty clay layer are
the glacial tills overlying the bedrock. The groundwater is typically about 1.5 to 2.1 m below
grade.
The proposed foundation at piers 76 and 77 generally consists of a group of drilled shafts ex-
tending into the bedrock. The top of the drilled shaft is within the organic clay layer. It is antici-
pated that the shaft lateral behavior is largely governed by the organic clays and the varved silty
clays. Laboratory test results from the organic soils indicated that the organic content values
ranged from 2 to 45 percent and the natural water contents varied from 19 to 309 percent (PB,
2013). The standard penetration test (SPT) indicates the blow counts were mostly “weight of
hammer”. The laboratory and CPT results generally indicate that the undrained shear strength of
the organic clay is in the range of 14.4 and 19.2 kPa.
Laboratory test results of the varved cohesive soils indicated natural water contents typically
between 20 and 35 percent (Arora, 2017). The Liquid Limit (LL) is typically less than 50 and
the Plasticity Index (PI) generally ranges between 6 and 23. The standard penetration test (SPT)
indicates the blow counts were mostly “weight of hammer” to less than 10 blows per foot. The
laboratory and CPT results generally indicate that the undrained shear strength of the varved
silty clay ranges between 24 and 48 kPa.

3 NUMERICAL MODEL
3.1 Introduction
When a shaft or pile is subject to a lateral force, passive wedges form in front of the pile, which
provides the most lateral resistance to the pile (Ashour et al. 1998). The overall pile lateral re-
sponse is a 3-dimensional behavior and would be ideally addressed by a 3D numerical model-
ing. In the strain wedge method, it is assumed that a constant shape of a passive wedge may be
appropriate in a homogenous soil sublayer to simulate the lateral resistance (Ashour et al. 1998).
At a great depth below ground in cohesive soils, the failure is more represented by plastic flow
of the soil around the pile as it deflects laterally (Randolph & Houlsby, 1984). In this study, the
shaft top is located about 4.3 m below ground and therefore a plain strain condition is assumed
when modeling the shaft lateral behavior. A 2D finite difference analysis was performed using
the commercial program FLAC (Version 7.0). Since the on-site soils are predominantly cohe-
sive (very soft to medium stiff) in the upper depths where maximum pile deflection occurs, the
caisson effect was investigated in both the soft organic layer and the medium stiff clay layer.

3.2 Model Overview

Figure 4 shows the 2D numerical model without the adjacent caisson. The concrete pile is 1.5 m
in diameter with an elastic modulus of 25,000 MPa with a Poisson’s ratio of 0.15. The soil prop-
erties used in the numerical modeling are summarized in Table 1. The soils were modeled as
linear-elastic perfectly plastic material using Mohr-Coulomb yielding criterion. Both the pile
and soil were divided into quadrilateral elements generated automatically by FLAC. Interface
elements were introduced to simulate the soil-pile interactions along the pile surfaces. A 15 m
by 15 m soil region is fixed (no movement) to represent the far-field boundary conditions.
 Existing Caisson

Drilled Shaft

Figure 4. Overview of the numerical model

Table 1. Soil properties in the numerical model.

Soil Layer No. Soil Type Su (kPa) E (kPa) ν ε50
1 Soft Organic Clay 10.6 1680 0.49 0.02
2 Medium Stiff Clay 26.9 8832 0.49 0.01
Su: Undrained shear strength
E: Elastic modulus
ν: Poisson’s ratio
ε50: Axial strain at 50% peak strength

3.3 Model Calibration

The “Matlock” soft clay (Matlock, 1970) model was used as “backbone” p-y curves for both soil
layers 1 and 2. Soil layer 1 represents a “soft organic clay” condition with undrained shear
strength less than 24 kPa. Soil layer 2 represents a “medium stiff clay” condition with undrained
shear strength between 24 and 48 kPa. The soil properties presented in Table 1 were used to cal-
ibrate the lateral behavior to closely match the “backbone” p-y curves, as shown in Figure 5 and
Figure 6. In this process, an incremental lateral force was applied to the pile and the correspond-
ing pile movement at each load level was recorded. Figures 7 and 8 show the soil displacement
pattern under lateral load of the pile in soil layers 1 and 2, respectively. Both figures show the
soils in front of the shaft tend to move normally away from the pile circular surface which is
consistent with a passive wedge assumption (Ashour et al. 1998), while the soils behind the
shaft move more similar to a plastic flow around pattern (Randolph & Houlsby, 1984). By re-
cording the applied force versus the measured pile deflection, the pile lateral behavior in terms
of p-y curve is captured by the numerical model. In this process, it is assumed that the shaft sur-
face is rough and that no soil slips on the shaft surface. Next, the existing caisson was placed at
1.45 m from the pile (edge of caisson to center of pile) and the above procedure was repeated
with the same soil properties summarized in Table 1.

3.4 Soil-structure Interface

There are two soil-structure interfaces in the numerical model: the soil-shaft interface and the
soil-caisson interface. Interface elements were introduced to model the soil-structure interaction
on the interface. Three interface conditions were considered: smooth, rough, and medium rough.
The smooth condition simulates the case that the soil is free to move along the structure surface
at any mobilized shear stress level. The rough condition simulates the case that the soil will
“stick” to the surface and no relative movement will occur between the soil and the structure.
The medium rough condition represents a more realistic interface behavior and an adhesion (c α)
value of cα = 0.55Su was assumed. This estimate is based on the recommended axial friction re-
sistance for drilled shafts (Brown et al. 2010).

Figure 5. Calibration of p-y curve in soft organic clay

 Figure 6. Calibration of p-y curve in medium stiff clay

JOB TITLE : FLAC Model - no caisson (*10^1)

FLAC (Version 7.00)

5.000
LEGEND

8-Feb-17 13:38
step 41168
-8.333E+00 <x< 5.833E+01 4.000

-8.333E+00 <y< 5.833E+01

Displacement vectors
max vector = 8.095E-01
3.000

0 2E 0

2.000

1.000

0.000

Jacobs Engineering Group

Boston, MA
0.000 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000
(*10^1)

Figure 7. Displacement vectors in soft organic clay (at 146kN/m load, no caisson)
 Figure 8. Displacement vectors in medium stiff clay (at 146 kN/m load, no caisson)

4 NUMERICAL RESULTS
4.1 Caisson Effect
Figures 9 and 10 show the soil displacement pattern under lateral load of the pile with the cais-
son presence in soil layers 1 and 2, respectively. Compared to Figures 4 and 5 without the cais-
son, the soil displacement pattern is significantly different and the soils are getting more
“squeezed” laterally out of the space between the pile and the caisson due to the presence of the
caisson. The resulting p-y curves due to the existing caisson effect are shown in Figures 11 and
12 for soil layers 1 and 2, respectively. The analysis shows that the effect of existing caisson on
the drilled shaft lateral behavior strongly depends on the mobilized lateral movement of the
shaft.
The existing caisson has two contradicting effects on the lateral behavior of the shaft. The ex-
isting caisson is rigid and will not move as the shaft is deflecting towards the caisson. Therefore,
the presence of the caisson would tend to stiffen the soils and provide higher resistance against
shaft deflection. However, as the shaft deflection keeps increasing, the soils between the shaft
and caisson become thinner and thinner, and the soils become more and more susceptible to be
squeezed laterally out of the space between the two structures. When the shaft lateral deflection
is small, the “stiffening” effect is dominant and the soil lateral resistance is actually higher than
the condition without the caisson. When the shaft lateral deflection increases further, the
“squeezing” effect becomes more and more significant and the soil lateral resistance will tend to
decrease. Both “stiffening” and “squeezing” effects are obvious in Figures 11 and 12.

4.2 Soil-structure Interface Effect

The results also show that the soil-structure interface roughness has a significant impact on the
shaft lateral behavior when the caisson is present, particularly at large deflection levels. When
the interface is smooth, the soils are easier to get “squeezed” out of the space and hence the lat-
eral resistance to the shaft becomes less. When the interface is rough, the soils are less suscepti-
ble to get “squeezed” out of the space and hence the lateral resistance to the shaft increases. A
more realistic interface condition is between “smooth” and “rough”, and the resulted soil lateral
resistance is in between “smooth” and “rough” as well.
 Figure 9. Displacement vectors in soft organic clay (at 146kN/m load, with caisson)

Figure 10. Displacement vectors in medium stiff clay (at 146kN/m load, with caisson)
 Figure 11. Comparison of p-y curves in soft organic clay

Figure 12. Comparison of p-y curves in medium stiff clay

4.3 Lateral Behavior Effect

Based on Figures 11 and 12, the ultimate soil resistance is approximately 0%, 10% and 20% less
than the fully mobilized resistance without the caisson, for a rough, medium-rough, and smooth
interface conditions, respectively. On the other hand, the required soil displacement to fully mo-
bilize the ultimate resistance with the caisson is much less than the condition without the cais-
son. In the “soft organic clay” layer, the ultimate soil resistance is mobilized at about 25 cm lat-
eral deflection with the adjacent caisson while it requires about 60 cm to fully mobilize the soil
resistance without the caisson. In the “medium stiff clay” layer, the ultimate soil resistance is
mobilized at about 12 cm lateral deflection with the adjacent caisson while it requires about 30
cm to fully mobilize the soil resistance without the caisson.
The above observation tends to modify the “backbone” p-y curves with both p and y multipli-
ers due to the caisson effect. However, when the lateral deflection is small (e.g. less than 2.5
cm), the p-y curves are only slightly stiffer than the “backbone” p-y curves. For a smooth inter-
face condition, the p-y curves with caisson effect are almost the same as the “backbone” curves
when the lateral deflection is less than 2.5 cm.

4.4 Soil Stiffness Effect

The above observations are consistent between “soft organic clay” and “medium stiff clay”.
This indicates that the soil stiffness does not have a significant impact on the caisson effect with
both soil properties presented in Table 1. This may further suggest that the caisson effect is
about the same when the soil consistency is between very soft to medium stiff (e.g. undrained
shear strength less than 48 kPa).

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presents the lateral behavior of the drilled shaft due to a nearby caisson foundation.
Currently the p-y method is widely used in industry to model the pile behavior under lateral
loads. As a result, such caisson effect was investigated in terms of p-y modifiers. The following
conclusions may be drawn based on the numerical model with an approximate caisson-to-shaft
distance (caisson edge to shaft center) of 1D (D is the shaft diameter):
1. For very soft to medium stiff clays, the caisson effect is not sensitive to the actual soil
strength or stiffness values. This appears to be the case for soil undrained shear strength
less than 48 kPa and an E/Su ratio between 150 and 300.
2. The caisson effect strongly depends on mobilized lateral movement of the shaft. The
presence of caisson has two contradicting effects on the lateral behavior of the shaft.
When the caisson movement is small, the caisson would tend to stiffen the soils and pro-
vide higher resistance against shaft deflection. When shaft deflection becomes large, the
soils between the shaft and caisson become thinner, and the soils are more susceptible to
be squeezed laterally out of the space between the two structures. When the shaft lateral
deflection is small, the “stiffening” effect is dominant and the soil lateral resistance is
higher than the condition without the caisson. When the shaft lateral deflection increases
further, the “squeezing” effect becomes more and more significant and the soil resistance
will tend to decrease.
3. The interface roughness between the caisson and soils has a significant impact to the ul-
timate soil resistance. When the interface is smooth, the soils are easier to get “squeezed”
out of the space and hence the lateral resistance to the shaft becomes less. When the inter-
face is rough, the soils are less susceptible to get “squeezed” out of the space and hence
the lateral resistance to the shaft increases.
4. Based on the numerical results presented in this study, the caisson will affect both the ul-
timate soil resistance and the displacement level to fully mobilize the soil resistance. A p-
multiplier of 0, 0.9 and 0.8 is suggested for a perfectly rough, medium rough and perfect-
ly smooth caisson surface, respectively. In all above cases, a y-multiplier of 0.42 is sug-
gested to account for the less mobilized displacement level at the ultimate resistance due
to the caisson presence.
5. For a proper designed foundation, the lateral deflection of piles or shafts is usually small,
e.g. less than 2.5 cm. At such displacement levels, the soils may exhibit a slightly stiffer
behavior, particularly for a rough caisson interface, when compared to a no caisson con-
dition. However, such effect is minor and the impact of existing caisson to the drilled
shaft lateral behavior may be neglected at small deflection levels (e.g. less than 2.5 cm).
6 REFERENCES

Arora and Associates, P.C. 2017. Geotechnical Foundation Report for Pulaski Skyway, Piers 76&77,
Township of Kearny, Hudson County, NJ.
Ashour, M., Norris, G. & Pilling, P. 1998. Lateral loading of a pile in layered soil using the strain wedge
model. J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 124(4): 303–315.
Brown, D.A., Turner, J.P. & Castelli, R.J. 2010. Drilled Shafts: Construction Procedures and LRFD De-
sign Methods. FHWA-NHI-10-016, May 2010.
Matlock, H. 1970. Correlations for design of laterally loaded piles in soft clay, 2nd Offshore Technology
Conference, Vol. I: 577-594. Houston, TX.
Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB), 2013. Rehabilitation of the Pulaski Skyway: Geotechnical Data Report for
Seismic Evaluation, submitted to New Jersey Department of Transportation.
Randolph, M. F. & Houlsby, G. 1984. The limiting pressure on a circular pile loaded laterally in cohesive
soil. Geotechnique, 34 (4): 613–623.