Seismic analysis of laterally loaded pile under influence of vertical loading using finite element method

Abstract

An efficient analytical approach using the finite element (FE) method, is proposed to calculate the bending moment and deflection response of a single pile under the combined influence of lateral and axial compressive loading during an earthquake, in both saturated and dry homogenous soil, and in a typical layered soil. Applying a pseudo-static method, seismic loads are calculated using the maximum horizontal acceleration (MHA) obtained from a seismic ground response analysis and a lateral load coefficient (a) for both liquefying and non-liquefying soils. It is observed that for a pile having l/d ratio 40 and embedded in dry dense sand, the normalized moment and displacement increase when the input motion becomes more severe, as expected. Further increasing of a from 0.1 to 0.3 leads to increase in the normalized moment and displacement from 0.033 to 0.042, and 0.009 to 0.035, respectively. The validity of the proposed FE based solution for estimating seismic response of pile is also assessed through dynamic centrifuge test results.