Nonlinear Characteristics of Floating Piles Under Rotating Machine Induced Vertical Vibration

Abstract

This study presents a finite element based approach to evaluate the linear and nonlinear frequency–amplitude response of floating piles subject to rotating machine induced vertical vibrations. A Matlab program is developed to compute the response of a single pile with floating tip condition for a linear and two nonlinear soil models. The variation of complex soil stiffness parameters with frequency has also been presented using different boundary zone parameters (shear modulus reduction ratio, thickness ratio and damping ratio). A detailed investigation of soil–pile system stiffness and damping parameters has been done considering different values of soil–pile separation lengths and boundary zone parameters. To verify the effectiveness of this proposed approach vertical vibration tests were conducted in the field on a single pile of diameter 0.114 m and length of 2.85 m by constructing floating tip condition. The frequency–amplitude response obtained from field vibration test has been compared with the theoretical results for all the soil models. From the comparison results it is observed that the proposed theory can predict the nonlinear response of floating piles very efficiently with proper inclusion of boundary zone parameters and soil–pile separation lengths.