A review on design aspects and behavioral studies of pile foundations in liquefiable soil

ABSTRACT

Pile foundations are provided for structures, where soil at the top layers possesses low bearing capacity. A comprehensive understanding of pile foundation located in liquefiable soils is a key requirement to enable designer to arrive at an economic design and for safe performance of structure during its intended service life. The failure of various structures on pile foundation system in liquefied soil subjected to earthquake load shows limitation of present methodologies available for design. Hence, study of pile foundations in liquefiable soil under earthquake loading attracted attention of researchers over many years. In addition, many governing factors, as compiled by researchers during analysis and design of pile foundation in liquefiable soils, need to be critically analysed. Therefore, in present paper comparative aspects of various issues addressed by different researchers are presented. It briefs about various International Codes followed in design and analysis. This review article also provides analytical study/numerical model developments, and experimental works performed by various researchers with an effort to bring out the progress in analysis and design. The current paper also discussed various behavioural issues, design aspects, recommendations by researchers dealing with proablems of pile foundation considering liquefaction condition of soil and some exemplary cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Pile foundation
• Liquefiable Soils
• Lateral Spreading
• Shake Table Test
• Centrifuge test

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI) for providing academic support and BARC for providing technical support in the current research being carried out on study of behavior of pile foundation in liquefied soils.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).