Shaking table test on reinforcement effect of partial ground improvement for group-pile foundation and its numericalsimulation

Abstract

In this paper, particular attention was paid to the seismic enhancement effect of group-pile foundation with partial ground improvement method that is used for existing pile foundations in practical engineering. A model test on a full system with a superstructure, a nine-pile foundation and a sandy ground was conducted with the shaking table test device. The model pile is made from aluminum and the model ground is made from Toyoura Sand. The shaking table test device is 120cm in width and 160cm in length. The maximum acceleration is 1g and the maximum displacement is 5cm. The maximum payload is 16kN and the highest frequency is 10Hz. The model ground is carefully prepared to obtain a ground with controllable unified density. Before the shaking table test, the pattern of the partial ground improvement for an existed group-pile foundation is carefully selected using numerical tests with a 3D elastoplastic static finite element analysis. In the analysis, the nonlinear behavior of ground and piles are described by the cyclic mobility model (Zhang et al., 2007) and the axial force dependent model (AFD model) proposed by Zhang and Kimura (2002) can take into consideration of axial-force dependency in the nonlinear moment–curvature relations. The applicability of the numerical analysis has been verified in previous works by comparing the numerical results with a real-scale field tests (Kosa et al., 1998). Based on the results from the numerical tests on seismic enhancement effect of group-pile foundation with ground improvement, an optimum pattern of partial ground improvement of an existing pile foundations has been picked out for shaking table test. A numerical analysis using the program DBLEAVES (Ye, 2007) is also conducted for the same optimum pattern for comparison purposes. The effectiveness of the partial ground improvement method has been proved by both the shaking table test and the numerical analysis.