Investigation of Bending–Buckling Interaction of Piles in Liquefiable Soils

Abstract eng:
Post-earthquake reconnaissance of the 2001 Bhuj (India) earthquake and the 1995 Kobe (Japan) earthquake reveals that the pile supported structures still collapse after major earthquakes despite a large factor of safety against bending due to lateral loads being employed in their design. The authors believe that the cause of this phenomenon is due to omission of the effect of axial loads in code based design of piles which assumes the failure of piles in liquefied soils to be due to lateral spreading of the soil resulting in a flexural failure. A number of experimental investigations at University of Cambridge reveal that when the soil liquefies the reduction in the supporting lateral stiffness of the soil can cause a buckling failure of the pile which can be initiated by lateral spreading or inertia or any imperfection. Bending and buckling requires different approach in design. Moreover, both the mechanisms (bending and buckling) interact and ultimately the member in question fails by exceeding the bending moment. The bending-buckling interaction mechanism is thereby being hypothesized as the primary reason leading to the collapse of many pile-supported structures in earthquakes. An analytical investigation and a numerical study using SAP and OpenSees are being carried out in this manuscript to support this hypothesis and also to highlight the importance of this interaction.

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