Behaviour of tapered piles subjected to lateral harmonic loading

Abstract

In this study, the behaviour of conventional concrete tapered piles subjected to lateral harmonic excitation is assessed. For a constant volume of pile material, the tapered pile is modelled in two different series. The first series is modelled with a constant pile tip diameter and the second series comprises of constant length of the pile. The response curves of the soil–pile system under horizontal vibration are obtained from three-dimensional finite element numerical simulation. The dynamic properties of the soil–pile system, i.e., the stiffness and the damping ratio are calculated from the response curves. It is observed that the tapered piles in the first series exhibit 4.14–8.87% lower resonant frequency than cylindrical piles of the same volume of pile material, whereas the tapered piles in the second series display a resonant frequency 2.95–7.69% higher than that of the cylindrical piles. Further, the resonant amplitude and frequency obtained from the finite element simulation are compared with a modified analytical solution. The resonant frequencies obtained from the finite element simulation are within an error limit of ± 0.57–10% as compared to that obtained from the analytical approach.