NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF DISPLACEMENT OF LATERALLY LOADED PILES SUBJECTED TO DYNAMIC LOADING

Abstract

In this paper, the behavior of a vertical pile for both free headed and fixed head condition and batter pile subjected to lateral earthquake load are modeled with finite element software. The paper attempts to examine the effect of vertical and batter angle on its deflection magnitude with different pile length and magnitude under earthquake loading. The overall response of vertical and batter pile subjected to lateral earthquake load are investigated using 3D finite element method was applied for numerical modeling and plaxis3D software is utilized to evaluate the lateral displacement of pile. For this analysis, the length of the pile varies between 4m-24m with 4m interval and the batter angle vary 5 0 -250 . The effective pile length (lc) values differentiate the pile as short and long pile for both free head and fixed head conditions. also the analysis done on batter pile Two cases were considered; one case considered positive batter pile with pile length 8m the and two case considers negative batter with pile length 8m. The built-in material models of the Finite Element (FE) program PLAXIS were used to capture the head displacement of pile and for the seismic loading a real strong motion record of Hollister earthquake is adopted largely for its small duration. Dynamic analysis carried out using linear elastic soil material model used for both pile and soil. The analysis indicates that the head deflection on a pile decrease with increasing pile length because of soil stiffness increase within the depth for fixed head and free head pile. Short pile has higher deflection than long flexible pile for both fixed head and free head condition. For the increasing in negative batter angle decreases the pile head displacement This behavior is due batter pile generally have higher horizontal stiffness, mainly due to the fact that inclined pile provide partial horizontal resistance and the upper soil support in a negative battered pile is enormous. For the increasing in positive batter angle increasing the pile head displacement This behavior is due the soil reaction at the ground level is zero for positive batter pile