Behavior of pile embedded in different soil types under the effect of earthquake

Abstract

In the seismic areas, piles are often passed through shallow loose or soft soil deposits and rest on end bearing soils. Damages due to earthquakes in piles built in layered soils occurred close to interfaces separating layers with very different shear moduli. In this study 3D finite element analyses are performed to simulate a soil-pile system under earthquake excitation in different soil types. As an example, the soil profiles of active seismic zones in Iraq will be used. For this a data base was prepared for static and dynamic parameters of different Iraq soils which were gathered and typical profiles for north, middle and south of Iraq were established. The properties of soils were then used as input dynamic data for finite element program PLAXIS 3D 2013 to study the response of single pile foundation. As earthquake input data the recording one obtained from the April 20, 2012 earthquake which hit Ali Al-Gharbi in Missan Province in Iraq was used, because this was one of the influential earthquakes. As a result the maximum bending moment occurs at the influence of different soil layers, also according to the soil-pile interaction, the deflected shape have the same behavior of pile embedded in sand and clayey soil as well as the pile that embedded in two clayey soil layers with thin sandy layers in between.