Nonlinear soil and pile behaviour on kinematic bending response of flexible piles

摘要

In recent years kinematic interaction of piled foundations under seismic loading has been extensively researched from both an experimental and a numerical viewpoint. With regard to numerical aspects, most literature studies implement simplified constitutive models to describe soil and pile behaviour despite current availability of sophisticated constitutive models for both materials. The use of advanced constitutive models is limited in practice due to the difficulty in calibrating several constitutive parameters and the high computation demand which is generally required, particularly if a 3D continuum approach is selected for the analysis. To overcome some of the difficulties above and achieve a better understanding on kinematic response of piles under strong earthquakes, the capability of an advanced but still user-friendly kinematic hardening constitutive soil model has been investigated. The model derives from the classical Von Mises failure criterion with the addition of isotropic and kinematic hardening components to better represent soil response under cyclic loading.