Kinematic Response of Single Piles to Vertical P-Waves in Multilayered Soil

Abstract

A rigorous mathematical formulation for the kinematic response of single piles embedded in multilayered soil subjected to vertically incident P-waves is proposed based on the modified Vlasov model. The governing equations and boundary conditions of the soil–pile system are obtained by using Hamilton's principle. The soil–pile interaction and the physical properties of the layered soils are taken into consideration in the proposed model. The accuracy of the proposed method is validated by the comparison of the proposed solution results with some existing solutions. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of the soil inhomogeneity on the kinematic response of single piles. The results reveal that: as for the two-layered case, the thickness of the upper soft layer has a significant influence on the kinematic response of single piles; as for the three-layered case, the soil–pile interaction is very sensitive to the thickness and Young's modulus of the middle layer.