Abstract: Based on elastic-perfectly plastic and bilinear load transfer functions for soil surrounding the pile shaft and under the pile tip respectively,a closed analytical solution was presented for predicting nonlinear response of axially loaded piles,considering that the limited shaft resistance and the shear stiffness coefficient varied linearly with depth.The load and settlement responses,the distribution of displacements,axial load and shaft resistance were obtained,and the performance of load transfer behavior of a single pile was determined.The reasonable model parameters could be determined by the back analysis of single pile loading tests and soil tests.The rationality of the proposed method was proved by the good agreement between the computed results and the measured data of load tests on in situ piles.