Rigorous solution for kinematic response of floating piles subjected to vertical P-wave

Abstract

Review of damage caused by recent earthquakes revealed that the vertical component of ground motion exceeded the horizontal component in some places and caused structural damage such as elephant foot buckling of large columns and piles. Therefore, a rigorous solution is derived in this paper for axial kinematic response of floating piles under vertically incident P-waves. The wave fields for both pile and soil are derived directly from the governing equation of motion using the separation of variables method. The effect of wave scattering by the soil-pile system is considered rigorously by decoupling the scattering wave from the total wave fields. The developed mathematically rigorous solution can be used to verify the accuracy of other numerical solutions and analytical approximations. Moreover, the present solution can account for the wave-induced singular characteristics at the pile tip. The predictions of the developed solution are compared with those obtained from existing solutions. The effects of the relative pile-soil modulus ratio and pile slenderness ratio on the kinematic response coefficient, amplification factor, distributed soil resistance along the pile shaft, as well as soil vibration for varying are evaluated.