Seismic behavior of piled raft with ground improvement supporting a base-isolated building on soft ground in Tokyo

Abstract

The static and seismic behavior of a piled raft foundation, supporting a 12-story base-isolated building in Tokyo, is investigated by monitoring the soil–foundation–structure system. Since the building is located on loose silty sand, underlain by soft cohesive soil, a piled raft with grid-form deep cement mixing walls was employed to cope with the liquefiable sand as well as to improve the bearing capacity of the raft foundation. To confirm the validity of the foundation design, field measurements were carried out on the ground settlements, the pile loads, the contact pressure and the pore-water pressure beneath the raft from the beginning of the construction to 43 months after the end of the construction.On March 11, 2011, 30 months after the end of the construction, the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake struck the building site. The seismic response of the ground and the foundation–structure system was successfully recorded during the earthquake, and a peak horizontal ground acceleration of 1.75m/s2 was observed at the site of the building. Based on static and dynamic measurement results, it was found that there was little change in the foundation settlement and the load sharing between the raft and the piles before and after the earthquake. It was also found that the horizontal accelerations of the superstructure were reduced to approximately 30% of those of the ground near the ground surface by the input losses due to the kinematic soil–foundation interaction in addition to the base isolation system.Consequently, the piled raft with grid-form deep cement mixing walls was found to be quite stable in the soft ground during and after the earthquake.