Numerical simulations of shake-table experiment for dynamic soil-pile-structure interaction in liquefiable soils

A shake-table experiment on pile foundations in liquefiable soils composed of liquefiable sand and overlying soft clay is studied. A three-dimensional (3D) effective stress finite element (FE) analysis is employed to simulate the experiment. A recently developed multi-surface elasto-plastic constitutive model and a fully coupled dynamic inelastic FE formulation (u-p) are used to model the liquefaction behavior of the sand. The soil domains are discretized using a solid-fl uid fully coupled (u-p) 20-8 noded brick element. The pile is simulated using beam-column elements. Upon careful calibration, very good agreement is obtained between the computed and the measured dynamic behavior of the ground and the pile. A parametric analysis is also conducted on the model to investigate the effect of pile-pinning, pile diameter, pile stiffness, ground inclination angle, superstructure mass and pile head restraints on the ground improvement. It is found that the pile foundation has a noticeable pinning effect that reduces the lateral soil displacement. It is observed that a larger pile diameter and fixed pile head restraints contribute to decreasing the lateral pile deformation; however, a higher ground inclination angle tends to increase the lateral pile head displacements and pile stiffness, and superstructure mass seems to effectively influence the lateral pile displacements.