Project Location: Mississippi River, Mississippi
Client: U.S. Corps of Engineers; Vicksburg, Mississippi
Dates: 1988

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has responsibility for numerous lock structures on the Mississippi river. The principal objective of this study was to develop a rational method for the analysis of the stability of pile-supported lock structures. The continuing study included the identification of the possible failure mechanisms for the foundation, modeling the response of a pile group for a lock structure, investigation of the mechanism for piles that pass through a potential slide, and development of a model to describe the interaction between piles and soils due to relative movement.