• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

Seismic analyses of a pile under a large rigid basement foundation embedded in the homogeneous soil layer were performed practically by a response displacement method assuming a sinusoidal wave form. However, it is hard to take into account the characteristics of a large mat foundation and a heterogeneous soil layer with the response displacement method. The response displacement method is relevant to the 2D problems for longitudinal structures such as tunnel, underground cave structure, etc., but might not be relevant with isolated foundations for building structures. In this study, seismic pile analysis by a pseudo 3D finite element method was carried out to compare numerical results with results of the response displacement method considering 3D characteristics of a foundation-soil system which is important for the building foundation analyses. Study results show that seismic analyses results of a response displacement method are similar to those of a pseudo 3D numerical method for stiff and dense soil layers, but they are too conservative for a soft soil layer inducing large soil pressures on the foundation wall and large pile displacements due to ignored foundation rigidity and resistance.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.2
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• pp.223-237
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• 2020

Transmission towers have come to represent one of the most important infrastructures in today's society, which may suffer severe earthquakes during their service lives. However, in the conventional seismic analyses of transmission towers, the towers are normally assumed to be fixed on the ground without considering the effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI) on the pile-supported transmission tower. This assumption may lead to inaccurate seismic performance estimations of transmission towers. In the present study, the seismic response and failure analyses of pile-supported transmission towers considering SSI are comprehensively performed based on the finite element method. Specifically, two detailed finite element (FE) models of the employed pile-supported transmission tower with and without consideration of SSI effects are established in ABAQUS analysis platform, in which SSI is simulated by the classical p-y approach. A simulation method is developed to stochastically synthesize the earthquake ground motions at different soil depths (i.e. depth-varying ground motions, DVGMs). The impacts of SSI on the dynamic characteristic, seismic response and failure modes are investigated and discussed by using the generated FE models and ground motions. Numerical results show that the vibration mode shapes of the pile-supported transmission towers with and without SSI are basically same; however, SSI can significantly affect the dynamic characteristic by altering the vibration frequencies of different modes. Neglecting the SSI and the variability of earthquake motions at different depths may cause an underestimate and overestimate on the seismic responses, respectively. Moreover, the seismic failure mode of pile-supported transmission towers is also significantly impacted by the SSI and DVGMs.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.369-376
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• 2020

Given the importance of quickly recovering livelihoods and economic activity after an earthquake, the seismic performance of the pile foundation is becoming more critical than before. In order to promote seismic retrofit of the pile foundations, it is necessary to develop a method for evaluating the seismic performance of the pile foundation based on the experimental data. In this paper, we focus on the building that was suffered severe damage to the pile foundation, conduct simulation analyses of the building, and report the results of evaluating the dynamic characteristics when piles are damaged using a system identification method. As a result, an analysis model that can accurately simulate the behavior of the damaged building during an earthquake was constructed, and it was shown that the system identification method could extract dynamic characteristics that may damage piles.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.453-462
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• 2023

Designing pile foundations subjected to the uplift forces such as buildings, oil platforms, and anchors is becoming increasingly concerned. In this paper, the conceptual design of a new type of driven piles called expanding pile is presented and assessed. Some grooves have been created in the shaft of the novel pile, and some moveable arms have been designed at the pile tip. At first, static analyses using the finite element method were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the innovative pile on the axial bearing capacity. Then its effect on seismic behavior of moment frame is considered. Results show that the expanding arms were provided an ideal anchorage system because of the soil's noticeable locking-up effect increasing uplift bearing capacity. For example at the end of the static tensile loading procedure, displacement decrement up to 55 percent is observed. In addition, comparing the uplift bearing capacity of the usual and new pile with different lengths in sand and clay layers shows noticeable effect and sharp increase up to about two times especially in longer piles. Besides, a sensible reduction in the seismic response and the stresses in the beam-column connection between 23-36 percent are achieved that ensures better seismic behavior of the structures.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.437-447
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• 2023

Inclined piles are commonly used in civil engineering constructions where significant lateral resistance is required. Many researchers proved their positive performance on the seismic behavior of the supported structure and the piles themselves. However, most of these numerical studies were done within the framework of linear elastic or elastoplastic soil behavior, neglecting therefore the soil non-linearity at low and moderate soil strains which is questionable and could be misleading in dynamic analysis. The main objective of this study is to examine the influence of the pile inclination on the seismic performance of the soil-pile-structure system when both the linear elastic and the nonlinear soil models are employed. Based on the comparative responses, the adequacy of the soil's linear elastic behavior will be therefore evaluated. The analysis is conducted by generating a three-dimensional finite difference model, where a full interaction between the soil, structure, and inclined piles is considered. The numerical survey proved that the pile inclination can have a significant impact on the internal forces generated by seismic activity, specifically on the bending moment and shear forces. The main disadvantages of using inclined piles in this system are the bending forces at the head and pile-to-head connection. It is crucial to account for soil nonlinearity to accurately assess the seismic response of the soil-pile-structure system.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.15-26
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• 2018

Recently, as the seismic performance based design methods have been introduced, dynamic numerical analyses need to be performed to evaluate the actual performance of structures under earthquakes. The verification of the numerical modeling is the most important for the performance based design. Therefore, 2-dimensional numerical analyses were performed to simulate the seismic behavior of a pile-supported structure, to provide the proper numerical modeling and to determine of input parameters. A dynamic centrifuge test of a pile group in dry loose sand was simulated to verify the applicability of the numerical model. The numerical modeling was carefully made to reflect the actual condition of the centrifuge test including dynamic soil properties, soil-pile interaction, boundary condition, the modeling of the group pile and structure and so on. The predicted behavior of the numerical analyses successfully simulated the acceleration variation in ground, the moment and displacement of the pile, and the displacement and acceleration of the structure. Therefore, the adopted numerical modeling and the input parameters can be used to evaluate the seismic performance of pile groups.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.47-56
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• 2017

Aseismic designs of pile-supported wharves are commonly performed utilizing simplified dynamic analyses, such as multi-mode spectral analyses. Simplified analyses can be useful for evaluating the limit state of structures. However, several pile-supported wharves, that have been damaged during past earthquakes, have shown that soil deformation and soil-pile dynamic interaction significantly affect the entire behavior of structures. Such behavior can be captured by performing nonlinear effective stress analyses, which can properly consider the dynamic interactions among the soil-pile-structure. The present study attempts to investigate the earthquake performance of a pile-supported wharf utilizing a three-dimensional numerical method. The damaged pile-supported wharf at the Kobe Port during the Hyogo-ken Nambu earthquake (1995) is selected to verify the applicability of the numerical modeling. Analysis results showed a suitable agreement with the observations on the damaged wharf, and the significant effect of excess pore pressure development and pile-soil dynamic interaction on the seismic performance of the wharf.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.287-294
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• 2019

The finite element method (FEM) is widely used to evaluate the seismic performance of pile-supported buildings. However, there are problems associated with modeling the pile end resistance using the FEM, such as the dependence on the mesh size. This paper proposes a new method of modeling around the pile tip to avoid the mesh size effect in two-dimensional (2D) analyses. Specifically, we consider the area of influence around the pile tip as an artificial constraint on the behavior of the soil. We explain the problems with existing methods of modeling the pile tip. We then conduct a three-dimensional (3D) analysis of a pile in various soil conditions to evaluate the area of influence of the soil around the pile tip. The analysis results show that the normalized area of influence extends approximately 2.5 times the diameter of the pile below the pile tip. Finally, we propose a new method for modeling pile foundations with artificial constraints on the nodal points within the area of influence. The proposed model is expected to be useful in the practical seismic design of pile-supported buildings via a 2D analysis.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.425-434
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• 2019

It is important to ensure the seismic safety of pile-bent bridges constructed in areas with thick soft ground consisting of various soil layers against seismic motion in these layers. In this study, several synthetic seismic waves that are compatible with the seismic design spectrum for rock sites were generated, and the ground acceleration history of each soil layer was obtained based on ground analyses. Using these acceleration histories, each soil layer was modeled using equivalent linear springs, and multi-support excitation analyses were performed using the input motion obtained at each soil layer. Due to the nonlinear behavior of the soft soil layers, the intensity of the input ground motion was not amplified, which resulted in the elastic behavior of the bridge. In addition, inputting the acceleration history obtained from a particular layer simultaneously into all the ground springs reduced the response. Therefore, the seismic performance of this type of bridge might be overestimated if multi-excitation analysis is not performed.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.295-308
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• 2004

In this study, several Soil-Structure-Interaction (SSI) analyses were performed using the developed FE-BE coupling method and the seismic response behavior of the structure's systems was determined. For the verification of the fundamental solution which is used in this analysis method, a dynamic analysis of the homogeneous ground was performed and it was compared to the results of Estorff et al. In order to verify the seismic response analysis, the results are compared with those of another commercial code. Several kindd of SSI analyses were performed and the seismic response associated with the rile foundation, seismic waves and a consideration of the ground nonlinearity were determined. As a result, it was found that the pile foundations didn't greatly helpful during the seismic event.