Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1

Background

As more than half the world population are now living in cities, there are ever-increasing demands for new infrastructures, which when coupled with the constraints of limited urban space, have forced the engineers to designing structures that are larger, taller and heavier than ever before. Sometimes these structures have to be built on locations that are not suitable to carry such large loads. Such structures bring with them a host of problems related to safety and economy of design and construction of these structures. Pile foundations are commonly used to support such large and heavy structures.

Some recent earthquakes such as the Bhuj earthquake in 2001 and Sichuan earthquake in 2008 have caused widespread damage leading to losses of human life. During these earthquakes, modern

structures have been found to be just as vulnerable as old structures. Damage to pile foundations has often been the governing factor for the failure of such structures. Once damaged, the process of repairing such deep foundations will be extremely expensive and complicated, in terms of time, cost, and efforts, and hence, should be avoided.

While designing pile foundations for lateral loading, the governing criterion is, more often that not, the maximum deflection of piles rather than the ultimate capacity of the piles. Therefore, while designing pile foundations subjected to lateral loads, the primary concern should be to keep the maximum pile deflection within acceptable limit. Hence, it is crucial that careful and rigorous analysis of lateral pile deformations under the anticipated lateral loading be carried out.

While static load conditions are an important part of the design process, dynamic loads are of greater importance. Hence, the effects of dynamic soil-structure interaction on the overall pile response should be taken into consideration.

The response of the soil to the lateral dynamic loads will influence the response of the piles and the structure. Similarly, the response of the structure will in turn influence the response of the piles and the soil. This process by which the soil, piles and structure influence each others responses to the applied loads is referred to as soil-pilestructure interaction. As such, the behavior of a soil-pile-structure system cannot be determined by the individual response of each component; rather, the combined soil-pile-structure interaction needs to be considered.

When

subjected

to

moderate

to

strong

seismic

loads,

pile

foundations will undergo large displacements and the soil-pile system usually shows nonlinear behavior. Such nonlinear behavior of soil-pile systems will also have an effect on the response of the supported structure. Therefore, it is extremely important to properly understand their behavior under nonlinear conditions in order to evaluate the seismic response of pile-supported structures. In seismic regions, the nonlinear analysis and design of pile-supported structures requires an accurate prediction of the pile-head response
3

and the load resistance to lateral shaking caused by earthquake ground motions.

1.2

Review of Past Works

The response of piles subjected to dynamic lateral loading has been a field of extensive research over several decades. In a soil-pilestructure-system (SPSS) subjected to dynamic lateral loading, the following phenomena will occur:
(i)

The deformation of soil due to the lateral loading will deflect the pile. On the other hand, presence of the pile will affect the deformation of soil near the vicinity of the piles.

(ii)

The deflection thus generated in the pile is then transmitted to the superstructure.

(iii)

The superstructure will respond inertially to this transmitted

deflection, which will result in further deflection of the pile. To simplify this process, the total response of the system is substructured into Kinematic Interaction and Inertial Interaction. Various researchers have proposed several sub-structuring

techniques. Of these, the ones proposed by Gazetas (1984) and Waas & Hartmann (1981) are shown in Fig. 1.1 and Fig. 1.2 respectively.

Fig. 1.1: Sub-structuring concept: (a) Definition of Problem, (b) Decomposition into Kinematic & Inertial Interaction Problems, (c) Twostep analysis of Inertial Interaction (after Gazetas, 1984)

Fig. 1.2: Sub-structuring of Total Response of SPSS into Kinematic & Inertial Interaction Components (after Waas & Hartmann, 1981)

Kinematic Interaction (sometimes also called Wave Scattering effect) involves the response to base excitation of a hypothetical system in which the mass of the superstructure is set equal to zero. The motion of the pile will be different from that of the Free Field Motion, which is the motion of the soil only in which the pile is not present. This difference occurs due to the larger stiffness of piles, wave inclination or incoherence, or pile embedment. Kinematic effects are given by a frequency dependent transfer function, which is defined as the ratio of the foundation motion to the free field motion represented in the frequency domain.

Inertial Interaction is the response of the complete soil-pile-structure

system to excitation by DAlembert forces, -M uk , where uk is the

acceleration of the superstructure due to kinematic interaction and M is the mass of the superstructure. As a result, inertial forces and

overturning moments are produced at the base of the structure. Due to this, the piles and surrounding soil experience additional dynamic forces and displacements. The interaction between the pile and the superstructure takes place at the pile-head and this interaction is represented by a frequency dependent impedance function called Dynamic Impedance acting at the base of the structure. Dynamic impedance can be represented by a spring-and-dashpot system.

The superposition of kinematic and inertial interactions will exactly give the total response of an SPSS in linear conditions. But given that the inertial interaction is mostly predominant at shallow depths and kinematic interaction is predominant at larger depths of the soil, the superposition can be considered to hold true even for moderately nonlinear systems.

Kinematic interaction has, however, typically been neglected during pile design. This approach has been based on the assumption that inertial interaction dominates kinematic interaction. However,

several instances have been found where kinematic interaction dominates, especially at the head of fixed head piles embedded in soft soil subjected to dynamic loads, at the toe of the pile when it is strongly restrained or at the interfaces of soil layers with sharp difference in stiffness. Therefore, it has become imperative that kinematic and inertial interaction be considered simultaneously for seismic design of piles. However, very few studies have been conducted to study the pile behavior when kinematic interaction is dominant over inertial interaction and as such no design techniques are available that can consider such conditions for pile design.

The most important parameter of a pile for seismic design is its radius. The radius of the pile determines the bending stiffness of the pile which is the most important factor for seismic design. The predominant practice in determining the optimal pile radius during design is to increase its radius, if the bending strain exceeds its allowable limit, which is based on the assumption that inertial interaction is dominant. The effect of kinematic interaction on pile radius has rarely been studied.

Saitoh (2005) has investigated the combined effects of inertial and kinematic interaction on pile radius. The bending strain at pile-head has been normalized with the mean shear strain of the soil (maximum absolute displacement of ground surface divided by height of soil layer). He has found that there is opposite change in the inertial and kinematic bending strains with increase in the slenderness ratio of the pile (pile radius divided by pile height). This implies the presence of a slenderness ratio (i.e. a radius) at which the normalized bending strain at the pile-head reaches a local minimum, which has been termed the Optimal Pile Radius.

The Seismic Design Code for Railway Structures drawn up by Railway Technical Research Institute, Japan in 1999 has stipulated a static numerical analysis technique called Seismic Deformation Method (SDM), which can account for kinematic interaction as well as inertial interaction in a pile. Luo et al. (2002) have verified the adequacy of SDM in predicting the behavior of piles embedded in soft soil subjected to intense earthquakes. For this purpose, they have used SDM to analyze piles that experienced the HyogokenNanbu (Kobe) earthquake.
10

Saitoh (2007) has also established the adequacy of SDM to predict the bending strains at pile-head and subsequently the optimal pile radius for kinematically affected piles. He has developed a closed form formula for SDM to determine the normalized bending strain at pile-head. He has analyzed the piles subjected to local nonlinearity around the vicinity of the piles. This study has suggested that optimal pile radius increases with increased nonlinearity.

1.3

Aims Scope of Present Study

The necessity of considering the combined effects of kinematic and inertial interaction during the seismic design of piles has been well established by now. The importance of evaluating the response of piles subjected to nonlinear conditions cannot be understated either. However, we have only a limited understanding of the effect of nonlinearity on a pile subjected to kinematic interaction.

Thus, the present study has been carried out to study the behavior of single piles embedded in a uniform layer of dry sand subjected to nonlinear deformations in soil substratum. Consideration of cohesion

11

or any level of saturation in soil is beyond the scope of this work.

Specifically, the objectives of the present study can be outlined as follows:

1.

Study the changes in optimum pile radius due to global nonlinearity of the soil.

2.

Improve the understanding of the mechanism that induces these changes.

Shake table tests and numerical analysis using SDM were carried out for this purpose. The bending strain curves obtained during the process can also add invaluable insight into the response of piles subjected to nonlinear loads.

1.4

Organization of Thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction includes a brief discussion on the background and objectives of the present work. A brief review of

12

past research relevant to this thesis has also been included along with an organizational summary of the thesis. Chapter 2: Experimental methodology Study followed describes and the in detail the

experimental

experimental

apparatus. Detailed descriptions of modeling technique, loadings, shake table, data acquisition system and data recording system are presented in this chapter. Chapter 3: Numerical Analysis outlines the theory and

development of SDM analysis for the present study. The utility of SDM analysis for the study are discussed in detail in this chapter. Chapter 4: Results and Discussions contains the results

obtained from the model testing and analyses them in the light of the results obtained from SDM analysis. Chapter 5: Conclusions finally presents the conclusions of the works carried out in the previous chapters.

13