Far-field seismic soil-pile-raft interaction in normally consolidated kaolin clay

Abstract

The soft clay models, with and without piles, were subjected to seismic excitation in the centrifuge at the National University of Singapore. In uniform clay beds without piles, the strain softening and cyclic stiffness degradation are manifested as an increase in resonance periods of the surface response with level of shaking and with successive earthquakes. For the soil-pile systems tested, the effect of the surrounding soft clay was primarily to impose an inertial loading onto the piles, thereby increasing the natural period of the piles over and above that of the pile foundation alone. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London.