NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF PILE FOUNDATION SUBJECTED TO DYNAMIC LOADS

Abstract

The response of single pile foundations subjected to different earthquake excitations is considered in this paper. The behavior of such foundation is important specifically in case of earthquake loading through the supporting soil medium. An axisymmetric finite element model has been implemented to simulate the behavior of pile in soil deposit using Abaqus software. Eight node axisymmetric quadrilateral elements CAX8R used to simulate the soil continuum. Contact behavior between the single pile part and the part of soil was simulated using the ‘surface to surface’ contact method with master-slave concept. Furthermore, the pile behavior material has been simulated with a linear elastic model while soil material has been simulated with an elasto-plastic model “Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion”. Three different excitation records have been adopted in the analysis: El-Centro, Halabja and Ali- Algharbi earthquake records in order to investigate the effect of various dynamic loading. The results of the analysis demonstrate alteration in the response along the pile with different soil layer with each earthquake excitation