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Study on the lateral behavior of single pile embedded in virgin and improved clay under seismic motion

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Abstract

Rapid urbanization has led to the construction of important structures like bridges, flyovers and high rise buildings, mostly supported by pile foundations. In view of recent scarcity of land avoiding a particular construction site with poor soil deposit may not be a viable option. Hence, ground improvement has become an important remedial solution in the field of geotechnical engineering. Optimum depth of ground improvement required to achieve maximum lateral capacity of pile under seismic conditions is very much needed for practicing engineers. In the present study, Finite Element (FE) approach has been utilized to propose a simplified method to study the lateral response of pile under combined vertical and lateral load, installed in virgin as well as improved clayey deposit subjected to seismic motion. Nonlinear behavior of clay has been simulated using cyclic p-y curves. The number of equivalent uniform cycle for soil stiffness degradation has been considered based on earthquake magnitude. Stochastic simulation has been used to generate site specific earthquake accelerograms, considering different source to site distances. Comparison of pile behavior under different seismic motions of varying PBRA (Peak Bedrock Acceleration) have been done considering two different types of soil profile. The study reveals that with increased source to site distance, PBRA reduces whereas, PBRA increases with increased magnitude of earthquake. Maximum horizontal acceleration of soil (MHA) increases with increased earthquake magnitude and reduces with increased depth of ground treatment. Lateral pile head stiffness reduces with increased PBRA and increases with increased pile slenderness ratio up to L/D \(\le 20\), beyond which further increase of slenderness ratio reduces lateral pile capacity. Optimum depth of ground improvement for pile under seismic motion may be taken as about 6D to 8D for free head pile and 8D to 10D for fixed head pile.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, IIEST, Shibpur, Howrah, 711103, India

    Tanumaya Mitra, Ambarish Ghosh & Kalyan Kumar Chattopadhyay

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  1. Tanumaya Mitra
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  2. Ambarish Ghosh
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  3. Kalyan Kumar Chattopadhyay
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Correspondence to Tanumaya Mitra.

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Mitra, T., Ghosh, A. & Chattopadhyay, K.K. Study on the lateral behavior of single pile embedded in virgin and improved clay under seismic motion. Arab J Geosci 16, 424 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-023-11525-8

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