Implementing the slice method to evaluate lateral pile capacity in cohesive soil

This paper presents a novel method for evaluating the resistance factor used for the estimation of lateral pile capacity in cohesive soil. The developed method uses limit equilibrium and mobilized strength principles, which are implemented on the half-symmetric problem using a modification of the traditional slice method. The soil medium is discretized into a polar numerical grid, allowing sliplines investigation independently of geometrical shape assumptions. The paper presents the development of the SLIP (Snake Locomotion Iterative Procedure) optimization method, which enables an effective and efficient search of the critical slipline out of all slipline geometries that can be generated within the numerical grid. The SLIP iteratively updates the evaluated optimal slipline, according to the criterion of minimizing the pile resistance factor, N. The obtained solutions are consistent with previous plasticity results, with special attention to the smooth pile solution which is bounded between the best lower- and upper-bounds solutions to date. The work utilizes safety map principles to prove the uniqueness of the solution.