• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.183-192
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• 2022

Piled raft foundations are widely used and effective in supporting high-rise buildings around the world. In this study, a piled raft system was numerically simulated using PLAXIS 3D. The settlement comparison results between the actual building measurements and the three-dimensional (3D) numerical analysis, were in good agreement, indicating the usefulness of this approach for the evaluation of the feasibility of using a piled raft foundation in Ho Chi Minh City subsoil. The effects were investigated of the number of piles based on pile spacing, pile length, raft embedment on the settlement, load sharing, bending moments, and the shear force of the piled raft foundation in Ho Chi Minh City subsoil. The results indicated that with an increased number of piles, increased pile length, and embedding raft depth, the total and differential settlement decreased. The optimal design consisted of pile numbers of 60-70, corresponding to pile spacings is 5.5-6 times the pile diameter (D_p), in conjunction with a pile length-to-pile diameter ratio of 30. Furthermore, load sharing by the raft, by locating it in the second layer of stiff clay, could achieve 66% of the building load. The proposed model of piled raft foundations could reduce the total foundation cost by 49.61% compared to the conventional design. This research can assist practicing engineers in selecting pile and raft parameters in the design of piled raft foundations to produce an economical design for high-rise buildings in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, and around the world.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.367-380
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• 2024

Investigations has shown that the correct estimation of the effective amplification period is as important as the amplification value itself. It gets more important in 2D basins. This study presents a quantitative coefficient for consideration of the nonlinearity effect in terms of amplification value and the shift in its period which is missing or ineffectively considered in the previous studies. To attain this goal, by the application of a time domain fully nonlinear method, the deviation of the more common equivalent linear results from the basin nonlinear behavior under strong ground motions is investigated quantitatively. Also, despite the increase in the damping ratio, the possibility of the increase in the amplification due to the increase in motion strength is shown. To make the results useful in engineering practice, by introducing nonlinearity ratio, the effect of the nonlinearity is quantitatively estimated for two soft and stiff clayey basins with three different depths under a set of motions scaled to two target spectrum. Results show that at the 100 m depth soft clayey basin, while the nonlinearity ratio shows a 35% deviation at the basin edge part under DD1 motion level, its effect moves to the central part with 20% effect under DD3 motion level. By the increase in depth to 150 m, the results show a decrease in the overall effect of the nonlinear behavior for both clay types. At this depth, the nonlinearity ratio gives a 30% and 17% difference on a limited distance from outcrop at the soft clayey basin under DD1 and DD3 motion levels, respectively. At the 30 m depth basins, the nonlinearity ratio shows up to 25% difference for different cases. The presented ratio would be introduced as nonlinearity coefficients for consideration of the nonlinearity effects in the codes. The presented quantitative margins will help the designer to have a better understanding of the amplification period change because of nonlinearity over 2D basin surface.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.13-22
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• 2015

In the current work, a series of three-dimensional (3D) numerical modelling has been performed in order to study the effects of the relative locations of tunnels with respect to the position of pile tips which governs the behaviour of pre-existing, adjacent single piles. In the numerical analyses, several governing factors, such as tunnelling-induced pile head settlements, relative displacements, volume losses, axial pile forces, interface shear stresses and apparent factors of safety have been analysed. When the pile tips are inside the tunnelling influence zone, of which the pile tip location is considered with respect to the tunnel position, tunnelling-induced pile head settlements are larger than the ground surface settlements, resulting in tunnelling-induced tensile pile forces. On the contrary, when the pile tips are outside the influence zone, compressive pile forces associated with downward shear stresses at the upper part of the piles are developed. Based on computed load and displacement relation of the pile, the apparent factors of safety of the piles inside the tunnelling influence zone have been reduced by 36% in average. The shear transfer mechanism based on the relative tunnel locations has been analysed in great detail by considering tunnelling-induced pile forces, interface shear stresses and the apparent factors of safety.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.55-61
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• 2011

Song-Do international city is the area developed in large-scale land reclamation. Song-Do area consists of reclamation layer, sedimentary layer(loose silt, soft clay and sand alternating) and residual layer from the ground surface. Therefore, using pile foundation is inevitable to build structures safely. In this area, driven PHC piles have been generally constructed in terms of environmental and economic conditions. As a result of analyzing 4 sites in Song-Do district 5 and 7 recently, the method of driving pile has many problems because of existence of rigid soil in sedimentary layer and installation of more than 30m piles. In this case, when installing piles by drive after pre-boring up to appropriate depth, the results of constructability analysis were very good. And in the economic efficiency, although 4% of construction cost rose, it was a very slight increase in comparison with improvement of workability. In the case of the stability, more than 70% compared to the allowable stress of piles was satisfied through the load test. As a result, when PHC piles is installed in Song-Do district, the proper construction method is that piles are located at bearing layer after boring rigid sand layer.