Effect of air injection on pile and pile group behavior in liquefiable soil

Abstract

Soil liquefaction during large earthquakes causes serious damage to structures built on foundations. In recent years, artificially injecting small amounts of air into liquefaction-susceptible soils has been proposed as a newly developed and cost-effective liquefaction mitigation method. Nevertheless, the liquefaction response of piles through this method has not been investigated so far. A series of 1g shaking table tests were conducted in this research to evaluate the liquefaction response of pile and pile group in air-injected partially saturated soils. The results have shown that air injection effectively reduces the liquefaction-induced settlements of pile and pile group. Also, this method has relatively reduced the excess pore pressure ratio. According to visual results and bending moments in piles, the depth of a liquefied soil layer decreases in air-injected partially saturated soils. Also, the deformation of soil structure is observed to decrease by injecting air into the samples. Despite these effects, larger accelerations are transmitted to the surface of the soil and consequently to the structure, and larger bending moments are applied to the piles in air-injected partially saturated samples. It was observed that at the low confining pressure, the effectiveness of this method is not a function of air injection duration.