A Correlation between the Effect of Homogenous and Non-Homogenous Oil Contamination Dispersions on the Ultimate Load-Bearing Capacity of Pile Foundations Buried in Silty Sand

Abstract

In recent years, hydrocarbon contaminants have immensely influenced their surrounding environments, especially in soil mediums. The crude oil contaminations have also had a significant share of these impacts. The contaminations caused by the dispersion of hydrocarbon contaminants in soil mediums not only influence the chemical and geotechnical properties of soils, but also affect the strength of structures associated with the contaminated soil such as the deep foundations. In this research, besides analyzing the geotechnical properties of the oil-contaminated silty sand specimens under homogenous and non-homogenous oil dispersion conditions, the PLAXIS 2D finite element software was used to model the research problem and analyze the load-bearing capacity of the buried pile foundations. A relation was also proposed to establish a satisfactory correlation between the results from both contamination conditions using a suitable determination coefficient. The results from this research showed a considerable decrease in the load-settlement values tolerated by the buried pile under both soil contamination conditions. This decrease revealed a satisfactory correlation between the results from the one-dimensional contamination dispersion and the maximum homogenous soil contamination.