A VERIFICATION ANALYSIS FOR PILES IN LIQUEFIABLE SOIL

Abstract

The soil loses its strength and behaves like a liquid when the increasing the pore water pressure under dynamic loads in saturated sandy soils. The large soil displacements can occur on liquefied soils. Pile foundations are applied to bearing capacity problems soil which may be subjected to large lateral displacements due to liquefaction. Although there are many theoretical and practical studies on the behavior of laterally loaded piles in liquefiable soils, there is still no definitive method. The pile damages which are occurred by lateral spreading resulting from liquefaction under dynamic loads have been investigated by many scientists and studies on the causes of damages have increased. Pile response in liquefiable soils and the evaluation of its possible damage are generally assessed by using some available numerical method, for example: finite difference (FDM), finite element (FEM) and boundary element (BEM) methods. In this paper, the FDM method is used to study the pile behavior in liquefiable soils and its reliability is checked by comparison with centrifuge test results from literature. It, in which the effect of liquefaction-induced lateral spreading on pile was evaluated, are also studied. Finally, the analysis results with FLAC 2D are compared with those observed in a centrifuge experiment.