Seismic Analysis of Pile Foundations Using an Integrated Approach

This article presents an integrated approach for seismic analysis of pile foundations and demonstrates the applicability through an example. The approach involves various steps starting from identifying the seismic sources, analyzing local soil conditions, ground response analysis, and dynamic analysis of pile foundations. The complete nonlinearity of the soil (in case of liquefied soils) is incorporated in the analysis through nonlinear effective stress-based ground response and liquefaction analysis. A single pile and a 2 × 2 pile group are considered and dynamic analysis with varying earthquake intensities of ground motions have been applied to analyze the effect of intensity on pile response. The obtained results are presented in terms of pile displacements and bending moments. A state-of-the-art strain-hardening model has been utilized to simulate the response of pile in liquefied stratum. The proposed approach can be adopted for the design of pile-supported structures in seismically active regions as well as requalification studies of existing pile-supported structures.