Assessments of Kinematic Bending Moment at Pile Head in Seismic Area

ABSTRACT

Commonly used models for estimation of the maximum kinematic bending moment at pile head are evaluated in various ground conditions, and three-dimensional numerical simulations with various input seismic motions and pile dimensions are performed to investigate the soil–pile kinematic interactions. Additionally, equivalent-linear analyses are conducted to investigate the influences of soil stiffness and damping variations on the accuracy of the prediction model. The numerical calculated results show that the dimensionless frequency factor and effective soil curvature can be adopted to estimate the maximum kinematic bending at pile head.

KEYWORDS:

• Kinematic bending moments
• numerical simulation
• simplified model
• equivalent-linear analyses
• pile foundation

Acknowledgments

The authors also highly appreciate the anonymous reviewers’ valuable comments and constructive suggestions, which improved this paper greatly.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Numbers 41372274 and 41502273].