Piled Raft Foundation (PRF) Systems Behavior under Earthquake Loading

Behavior of piled rafts foundations as an efficient alternative system for pile groups subjected to earthquake loading has been studied and realized. The raft interaction with subsoil and also superstructure can affect the seismic response and load sharing of involved elements. ABAQUS software was employed based on the Finite Element method and constitutive soil models to investigate soil pile structure interaction (SPSI). For calibration and verification of the procedure of modeling with two other experimental studies, results compared by the analysis of models under single frequency sinusoidal dynamic loads. Afterwards, analyses of the same models were applied under the acceleration time history of the El-Centro earthquake. Results indicate that the participation of the raft interaction with soil under earthquake loading, well improves the seismic response and behavior of a piled foundation system. Reductions of maximum acceleration response, horizontal displacement and bending moment in the piled raft system, are some important achievements in this study. Moreover, more uniform stress distribution in soil deposit and prevention of stress concentration leads to the reduction of the PRF system settlement during earthquakes

Keywords:

Piled Raft Foundations (PRF) , FEM , ABAQUS , Earthquake Loading , SPSI