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Abstract: A quasi-three-dimensional method of analysis is presented for the nonlinear dynamic analysis of single piles and
pile groups. The analysis is performed in the time domain using strain-dependent moduli and damping, yielding at failure, and
a no-tension cutoff. The analysis has been incorporated into the computer program PILE-3D and has been validated using data
from centrifuge tests on a single pile and a 2 2 pile group under simulated earthquake loading. Analyses of the centrifuge
tests demonstrated a significant reduction in soil moduli around the piles during strong shaking and a corresponding reduction
in pile stiffnesses. The time-dependent shear modulus distribution in soil around the pile is obtained as part of the output. This
allows the time variation of dynamic impedances of pile foundations during shaking to be established and allows a realistic
assessment of the single-valued stiffnesses and damping factors usually incorporated into commercial structural analysis
programs for the seismic analysis of pile-supported structures. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of inertial
interaction between foundation and structure.
Key words: piles, dynamic, nonlinear, impedances, finite element, seismic response.
Rsum : Une mthode dlements finis quasi-tridimensionnelle est propose pour analyser la rponse dynamique non
linaire des pieux isols et des groupes de pieux. Lanalyse est faite dans le domaine temps en utilisant des modules et des
amortissements dpendants de la dformation, un coulement la rupture et un seuil de non-tension. Lanalyse a t
incorpore dans le programme PILE-3D et a t valide grce des essais en centrifugeuse sur un pieu isol et sur un groupe
de quatre pieux (2 2) dans des conditions de chargement sismique simules. Lanalyse des essais en centrifugeuse a montr
quil y avait une rduction importante des modules autour des pieux pendant une sollicitation violente, accompagne dune
rduction des raideurs dans les pieux. La rpartition des modules de cisaillement en fonction du temps dans le sol entourant le
pieu est obtenue comme rsultat du calcul. Ceci permet dtablir la variation dans le temps des impdances dynamiques des
pieux pendant la sollicitation et fournit une valuation raliste de la valeur unique des raideurs et des coefficients
damortissement qui est habituellement introduite dans les programmes danalyse de structures disponibles dans le commerce
pour ltude sismique des ouvrages fonds sur pieux. Lanalyse dmontre aussi limportance de linteraction inertielle entre la
fondation et la structure.
Mots cls : pieux, dynamique, non-linaire, impdance, lments finis, rponse sismique.
[Traduit par la rdaction]
nonlinearity of the soil response. For design purposes, lateral Fig. 1. The principle of the quasi-3D dynamic analysis of the
pile head stiffness in the latter case is to be evaluated at a pilesoilstructure interaction.
displacement of 25 mm (1.0 in.) at the pile head. The pile head
stiffness from the py approach can be much less than that
from the DYNA3 analysis.
The method presented here, which is incorporated in the
program PILE-3D (Wu and Finn 1994a), deals realistically
and comprehensively with all these factors except seismic
pore-water pressures. A modification of the method is now
under development to cope with these factors.
Fig. 2. A mechanical model used for the analysis of a pile group Fig. 3. The layout of the centrifuge test for a single pile. C.G., centre of
with a rigid pile cap. gravity; L.E.D., light emitting device.
Fig. 4. The prototype model of the single pile test. Fig. 6. The relationships between shear modulus, damping, and the
shear strain for the loose sand.
Fig. 8. The computed versus measured moment response at depth D Fig. 10. Layout of centrifuge test for a four-pile group.
= 3 m of the single pile.
Fig. 11. Finite element modelling of the four-pile group. Fig. 13. The computed versus measured displacement response at
the top of structural mass of the four-pile group.
pile cap is 0.23g, which agrees very well with the measured
peak acceleration of 0.24g. The PILE-3D analysis is capable of tracing these variations of
The computed displacement at the top of the structural mass soil properties during shaking. As an example of the space
matches fairly well with the measured displacement in the first distribution, soil shear moduli at depths of 0.25 and 2.10 m in
11 s of motion (Fig. 13). The computed displacement response the soil around the pile at a time t = 12.58 s are shown in
does not show any residual displacement since the analysis is Fig. 16. The space distribution of moduli and damping ratios
carried out using the equivalent linear elastic approach. The at time t allows the instantaneous stiffness and damping of the
measured displacement response shows a residual displace- pile foundation to be determined at time t. This allows the
ment of about 10 mm at the end of earthquake motion. The dynamic impedances to be computed as functions of time. The
increase in permanent deformation during shaking leads to the calculations are done by applying harmonic loads at the pile
measured and computed cycles of dynamic displacement being head and solving the resulting equations to obtain the complex
out of phase. valued pile head impedances corresponding to unit displace-
The computed moment time history in the instrumented pile ments or unit rotations. For cases presented here, the imped-
at a depth of 2.63 m in the location of maximum moment is ances were evaluated at the ground surface using PILIMP (Wu
plotted against the measured moment time history in Fig. 14. and Finn 1994b), specifically designed to calculate pile imped-
There is good agreement between the measured and the com- ance for given space distribution of moduli and damping ratios.
puted moments. The distribution of computed and measured At the excitation frequency f = 1.91 Hz, the dynamic
bending moments along the pile at the instant of peak pile cap stiffnesses (real part of dynamic impedance) of the pile de-
displacement are shown in Fig. 15. The computed moments crease dramatically as the level of shaking increases
agree reasonably well with the measured moments, especially (Fig. 17a). The dynamic stiffnesses experienced their lowest
in the range of maximum moments. The computed peak mo- values in the 10 to 14 s range when the largest displacements
ment is 203 kNm, compared with a measured peak moment occurred at the pile head (Fig. 17b). It can be seen that the
of 220 kNm. translational stiffness kvv decreased more than the rotational
stiffness k or the cross-coupling stiffness kv. At their lowest
Nonlinear pile impedances levels, kvv decreased to 20 000 kN/m, which is only 13.8% of its
initial value of 145000 kN/m, kv decreased to 45 000 kN/rad,
Dynamic stiffness of the single pile which is 36% of its initial value of 125000 kN/rad, and k
The estimation of pile impedances under nonlinear conditions showed the least effect of shear strain, as it decreased to
using PILE-3D will be explained here using the centrifuge 138 000 kNm/rad, which is 63.6% of its initial stiffness of
tests on the single pile shown in Fig. 3. The shear moduli and 217 000 kNm/rad. The stiffnesses recovered when the level
damping ratios of the soil are both space and time dependent. of displacement decreased with time. Representative values of
Fig. 15. Comparison between measured and computed bending Fig. 17. Variation with time of (a) pile head stiffnesses kvv, kv, and
moments at peak pile cap displacement for the four-pile group. k at f = 1.91 Hz and (b) peak pile head displacements.
Fig. 18. Variation of stiffnesses kvv and k of the single pile with Fig. 20. Comparison of dynamic stiffnesses of the single pile with
time under different excitation frequency. and without structural mass: (a) translational stiffness kvv
(b) rotational stiffness k.
Fig. 19. Variation with time of (a) stiffnesses kvv and kv of the
four-pile group at f = 1.91 Hz, and (b) peak displacements at the
pile cap.
Computational time
The nonlinear analysis was carried out in the time domain. The
average CPU time using a PC-486 (33 MHz) computer needed to
complete one step of integration is 7.0 s for the finite element grid
shown in Fig. 5, and 3 h of CPU time are required for an input
record of 1550 steps. The computation time is much shorter for a
conducted to explore the effect of structural mass on dynamic linear elastic analysis, when the shear moduli of soil foundation
stiffnesses of pile foundations. The centrifuge tests of the sin- remain constant through the time domain.
gle pile presented earlier were reanalyzed without taking the The average computational time for computing the dy-
structural mass into account. A set of time-dependent shear namic impedances using PILIMP is 50 s for one set of soil
properties. The total computational time required to generate Dames & Moore, Seattle, Wash., to the Washington State Depart-
curves as shown in Fig. 17 is about 30 min. The analyses can ment of Transportation, Olympia.
be conducted in reasonable time on an IBM compatible PC. Finn, W.D.L., and Gohl, W.B. 1987. Centrifuge model studies of piles
The analyses described herein were done on a 33 MHz ma- under simulated earthquake loading. In Dynamic response of pile
foundationsexperiment, analysis and observation. American
chine. Recent Pentum Chip based machines could reduce the
Society of Civil Engineers, Geotechnical Special Publication No.
time requirements up to a factor of 5. 11, pp. 2138.
Gohl, W.B. 1991. Response of pile foundations to simulated earth-
Conclusions and discussion quake loading: Experimental and analytical results. Ph.D. thesis,
Department of Civil Engineering, The University of British Co-
A quasi-3D method for nonlinear dynamic analysis of pile lumbia, Vancouver.
foundations has been presented. The method uses a simplified Hardin, B.O., and Black, W.L. 1968. Vibration modulus of normally
wave equation for describing soil response in a 3D half space. consolidated clay. Journal of Soil Mechanics and Foundations,
The method has been formulated in the time domain using the ASCE, 98: 667692.
finite element method. The time-domain analysis allows mod- Idriss, I.M., Lysmer, J., Hwang, R., and Seed, H.B. 1973. QUAD-4:
elling the variations of soil shear moduli and damping with A computer program for evaluating the seismic response of soil-
time under earthquake loading. structures by variable damping finite element procedures. Earth-
Centrifuge tests of a single pile and a 2 2 pile group have quake Engineering Research Centre, University of California,
Berkeley, Report No. EERC 73-16.
been analyzed using the proposed quasi-3D finite element
Idriss, I.M., Seed, H.B., and Serff, N. 1974. Seismic response by
method of analysis. The ability of the program PILE-3D to variable damping finite elements. Journal of the Geotechnical En-
model the seismic response adequately suggests that the modi- gineering Division, ASCE, 100: 113.
fied equivalent linear approach may be effective for engineer- Kaynia, A.M., and Kausel, E. 1982. Dynamic stiffnesses and seismic
ing purposes. response of pile groups. Department of Civil Engineering, Massa-
In addition to providing time histories of accelerations, dis- chusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Report R 82-03.
placements, and pile moments, PILE-3D is also capable of Novak, M., Sheta, M., El-Hifnawy, L., El-Marsafawi, H., and
computing time-dependent dynamic impedances of pile foun- Ramadan, O. 1990. DYNA3: A computer program for calculation
dation during an earthquake. The results of analyses showed of foundation response to dynamic loads. Geotechnical Research
that stiffnesses of the pile foundations decrease with the level Centre, the University of Western Ontario, London.
of shaking. In a seismic event, the translational stiffness kvv Poulos, H.G., and Davis, E.H. 1980. Pile foundation analysis and
design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.
decreases the most due to the shear-strain dependency of soil
Schnabel, P.B., Lysmer, J., and Seed, H.B. 1972. SHAKE: A com-
stiffness; the rotational stiffness k shows the least effect of puter program for earthquake response analysis of horizontally
shear strain. The proposed quasi-3D method directly takes into layered sites. Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, Univer-
account both the nonlinear pilesoilpile kinematic interaction sity of California, Berkeley, Report No. EERC 72-12.
of pile groups and the superstructurefoundation inertial inter- Seed, H.B., and Idriss, I.M. 1970. Soil moduli and damping factors for
action. The time variation of dynamic impedances of pile foun- dynamic response analyses. Earthquake Engineering Research Cen-
dations allows a realistic selection of the representative ter, University of California, Berkeley, Report No. ERRC 70-10.
discrete stiffnesses and damping ratios required by commer- Seed, H.B., Wong, R.T., Idriss, I.M., and Tokimatsu, K. 1986. Moduli
cial structural analysis programs. and damping factors for dynamic analyses of cohesionless soils.
A major advantage of the quasi-3D method is that solutions Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, ASCE, 112: 10161032.
can be readily obtained on IBM compatible PC computers in Wu, G. 1994. Dynamic soilstructure interaction: Pile foundations
and retaining structures. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Civil Engi-
a very short time compared to full 3D analysis. neering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Wu, G., and Finn, W.D.L. 1994a. PILE-3-D: A computer program for
Acknowledgement quasi-3-D non-linear dynamic analysis of single piles and pile
groups. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Brit-
The postgraduate fellowship awarded by the Natural Sciences ish Columbia, Vancouver.
and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to the Wu, G., and Finn, W.D.L. 1994b. PILIMP: A computer program for
lead author is acknowledged. This work is also supported in determining dynamic impedances of single piles and pile groups.
part by a grant from NSERC to the second author. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of British Columbia,
Vancouver.
References Wu, G., and Finn, W.D.L. 1997. Dynamic elastic analysis of pile
foundations using finite element method in the frequency domain.
Crouse, C.B. 1992. Effects of foundationsoil interaction. Report by Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 34: 3443.