Lateral performance of drilled shaft considering nonlinear soil and structure material behavior

Abstract

In addition to nonlinear soil behavior has been assumed in conventional analytical method, performance of the laterally loaded drilled-shaft is also strongly influenced by possible concrete cracking, steel yielding, and shaft/soil separation and interaction. However, these factors are often neglected in the most of available methods and studied results. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of the above-mentioned effects on lateral performance of drilled reinforced-concrete shaft. The finite element code, ABAQUS, which is available in the three-dimensional analysis is adopted for taking into account the nonlinearity in shaft and soil materials, pile-soil interaction and nonlinear geometric properties of the shaft/soil system in the analysis. Also, infinite elements are used to simulate unbounded boundary condition. One of the lateral pile load tests results of high-speed railway system in Taiwan is used to simulate the real behavior of drilled shaft subjected to lateral load. The numerical results show that the nonlinearity of material and geometry strongly affects the shaft deflection, steel stress distribution, concrete cracking state, soil uplift in front of the shaft, and separation between shaft/soil interfaces that is behind the shaft and along its depth.