MODELING OF PILE-SOIL INTERACTION IN A STANDARD FINITE ELEMENT BASED PROGRAM (SAP2000

Abstract

In this paper, Pile-Soil interaction is modeled in SAP2000, a finite element based program. The modeling technique developed for pile-soil interaction gives spring load-deformation curve for soil surrounding the pile and hence captures the response of the soil to movement of pile relative to surrounding soil (t-z curve), as experimental technique of instrumenting the pile along the length of pile for the same purpose would have been very costly. The pile-soil system modeled in SAP2000 requires the available load settlement data from pile load test not instrumented along pile length during load testing and establishes an average bi-linear spring load deformation curve. Once the spring load deformation curve is established, the site-specific t-z curve can be obtained, the curve can then be used for the same site to carry out the parametric study i.e. to predict the effect of different length and/or diameter of the pile on the load settlement curve of pile. in addition, the load settlement curve for other sites can be generated if the soil profile does not vary remarkably from that soil profile from which the spring load deformation curve is developed. This technique is applied to load settlement data of three pile load tests conducted in various localities of NWFP. The site-specific spring load-deformation curves are generated and transformed into t-z curves.