COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF ENERGY DISSIPATION IN SOIL-EMBEDDED PILES: AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH

Abstract

The study delves into a comprehensive examination of the total energy dissipation associated with a pile entrenched in the soil, with the soil being conceptualized as viscoelastic springs. "Dissipation" can be utilized to gauge the decay rate of displacement amplitude over time. Understanding dissipation in piles is pivotal for discerning the pace at which a pile achieves its equilibrium state when exposed to impact or free vibrations. Elevated dissipation levels indicate a swifter attenuation of transient vibrations, a crucial aspect for effective vibration mitigation during significant occurrences such as earthquakes, severe weather conditions, explosions, and impacts. The dispersion relation, reliant on wavenumber and free wave frequency, is derived for the pile-soil system using the Bloch's Floquet theorem. This relation is approached via the free-wave method, where a real wavenumber produces a sequence of complex frequencies. We propose an analytical closed-form expression in this study to forecast the overall dissipation from these complex frequency values. Additionally, we validate the accuracy of the predicted dissipation against a finite element-based numerical model of the soil-pile system. Furthermore, we examine the influence of factors such as material damping, Young's modulus, and shear modulus of the soil on the dissipation characteristics of the pile-soil system.