Vertical vibration of a pile embedded in radially disturbed viscoelastic soil considering the three-dimensional nature of soil

Abstract

This paper develops a closed-form series solution to analyze the vertical vibration of a circular cross-section pile embedded in radially disturbed soil. The gradually varying soil properties are simulated by dividing the disturbed soil into a series of annular zones. In each soil zones, both the radial and vertical displacements as well as their variations with depth are considered to account for the three-dimensional nature of soil. By degenerating the model into a simple undisturbed case, the developed solution is verified by comparing its predictions with the homogeneous solutions existed in the literature. Moreover, the predictions of the present solution are also compared with those obtained from a continuum model that only considers the vertical soil displacement and a plane strain model. The developed solution is then employed to investigate the effect of degree of disturbance and extent, and the pile length and elastic modulus on the vertical impedance of pile.