Few researchers 1, 2, 3 have conducted experimental study on the settlement behaviour of axially loaded piles. All these methods for the settlement analysis of pile foundations can be classified under three popular categories including (i) Experimental Method, (ii) Analytical methods and (iii) Numerical methods. As settlement plays a controlling role in the design of pile foundations, number of studies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 have been undertaken by several researchers to capture the exact solutions for settlement. Nowadays, lot of attention has been paid on axially loaded pile foundations to construct Civil Engineering infrastructures due to their high load bearing capacity and applicability in various kinds of geological scenarios.

The group pile analysis results provide a better load-settlement prediction when incorporating an interface zone thickness of pile dimeter from the pile shat using Hardening-Soil model while leaving the remaining soil as Linear-Elastic material. The single pile analysis results suggest that realistic load-settlement predictions can be drawn by considering complete soil as Mohr-Coulomb model at lower working loads, and incorporation of an interface zone thickness of two times pile diameter using Hardening-Soil model is required to simulate the load-settlement behaviour at higher working loads. The pile case history with settlement measurements made during field pile load test was considered to validate the single pile load-settlement simulation, and the same load test result was extended to simulate the load-settlement behaviour of pile group using RATZ analytical approach.

Three different types of analysis were incorporated: a linear elastic analysis, a complete nonlinear analysis and a combined analysis. Therefore, this paper focuses on the finite element solutions of load-settlement behaviour of a single pile and pile group using PLAXIS numerical package. Reliable prediction of settlement behaviour of axially loaded piles is one of the major concerns in geotechnical engineering.

How to model pile in plaxis 2d