Abstract
In the seismic design of pile foundations, the safety of the pile is assessed by considering the inertial force during an earthquake and subgrade reaction as external forces against the pile. The amount of deformation of the pile must be limited to a small value to maintain the safety of the pile. In the event of a large earthquake, quay walls and seawalls are subjected to lateral spreading because of the influence of biased seaward earth pressure. The amount of lateral spreading is considerably larger than what can be expected in a typical pile seismic design and may reach several meters. In this study, loading experiments that reproduced lateral spreading were conducted to evaluate the lateral spreading pressure acting on a pile when considerably large lateral spreading occurred. The experiment results showed that lateral spreading pressure depended on the ratio of pile spacing to pile diameter while the peak value of lateral spreading pressure was larger than the one assumed in practical design.
Highlights
In the seismic design of pile foundations, the safety of piles against the inertial forces generated by earthquakes is examined by considering the bending rigidity of a pile and a horizontal subgrade reaction
A horizontal loading experiment of the ground against a pile was performed to evaluate the characteristics of lateral spreading pressure acting on the pile foundation in case of large lateral spreading
The effect of ground compression is alleviated, and the lateral spreading pressure does not increase after the peak
Summary
In the seismic design of pile foundations, the safety of piles against the inertial forces generated by earthquakes is examined by considering the bending rigidity of a pile and a horizontal subgrade reaction. The subgrade reaction has an upper limit value, and shear strength of the ground or passive earth pressure is used as the upper limit value in design practice [1, 2]. As the yielding of the pile is not considered in the design, the deformation of the pile is expected to remain small. Quay walls and seawalls are subjected to large lateral spreading toward the sea because of biased seaward earth pressure and deterioration of ground rigidity due to earthquakes [3,4,5,6,7].
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