Dynamic soil-pile-raft interaction in normally consolidated soft clay during earthquakes

Abstract

This paper examines the seismic response of clay pile-raft system with flexible and stiff piles using centrifuge and numerical studies. Centrifuge studies showed that interaction between pile-raft and clay will cause a significant softening in the clay adjacent to the pile-raft which produced a lengthening of resonance period in near-field soil compared to the far-field soil. The difference of response among the raft and the soil at both near- and far-field indicates that ground motion at both near- and far-field cannot be representative of raft motion. There is also significant difference between flexible and stiff pile response. It has been shown in a previous study that, for stiff pile, the soft clay acts as an inertial loading medium rather than a supporting medium. For this reasons, the bending moment diagram extends deep into the soft soil stratum. However, for flexible pile, the supporting effect of the surrounding clay is much more significant than in stiff pile. As a result, the bending moment envelope for flexible pile under earthquake shaking is very similar to the head-loaded test results, with an active length of pile below which no significant bending moment occurs. © 2012 World Scientific Publishing Company.