Numerical analyses of pile performance in laterally spreading frozen ground crust overlying liquefiable soils

Lateral spread of frozen ground crust over liquefied soil has caused extensive bridge foundation damage in the past winter earthquakes. A shake table experiment was conducted to investigate the performance of a model pile in this scenario and revealed unique pile failure mechanisms. The modelling results provided valuable data for validating numerical models. This paper presents analyses and results of this experiment using two numerical modeling approaches: solid-fluid coupled finite element (FE) modeling and the beam-on-nonlinear-Winkler-foundation (BNWF) method. A FE model was constructed based on the experiment configuration and subjected to earthquake loading. Soil and pile response results were presented and compared with experimental results to validate this model. The BNWF method was used to predict the pile response and failure mechanism. A p-y curve was presented for modelling the frozen ground crust with the free-field displacement from the experiment as loading. Pile responses were presented and compared with those of the experiment and FE model. It was concluded that the coupled FE model was effective in predicting formation of three plastic hinges at ground surface, ground crust-liquefiable soil interface and within the medium dense sand layer, while the BNWF method was only able to predict the latter two.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1007/s11803-018-0457-6
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/16713664
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Copyright © 2018, Institute of Engineering Mechanics, China Earthquake Administration and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
• Authors:
  • Zhang, Xiaoyu
  • Yang, Zhaohui
• Publication Date: 2018-7

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: pp 491-499
• Serial:
  • Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Vibration
  • Volume: 17
  • Issue Number: 3
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISSN: 1671-3664
  • EISSN: 1993-503X
  • Serial URL: http://link.springer.com/journal/11803

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bridge foundations; Failure analysis; Frozen soils; Numerical analysis; Plasticity; Seismicity; Support piles
• Uncontrolled Terms: Liquefiable soils
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Geotechnology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01679127
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 27 2018 2:05PM