Kinematic response of vertical and batter pile groups in non-linear soft soil

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive numerical study on kinematic response of vertical and batter pile groups in soft soil, where soil non-linearity, batter angle, pile spacing and excitation frequency are related to pile-cap displacements, rotations, maximum pile moments, shear forces and axial forces. The finite element model is constructed in OpenSees MP, and parallel computing is utilized for a better (faster) performance. Results reveal that soil non-linearity has a profound impact on the kinematic interaction. Increasing batter angle decreases horizontal displacements but increases rotations. Batter pile groups yield lower spectral accelerations compared to vertical pile groups. For high , the spectral accelerations of the pile-cap may be lower compared to the spectral acceleration of the seismic input motion. Estimation using non-linear interaction factors conservatively estimates pile-cap displacements and rotations, while roughly captures the effects with respect to batter angle and frequency content within the specified framework.