Soil structure interaction

About: Soil structure interaction is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3653 publications have been published within this topic receiving 48890 citations.

Analysis of Piles Subjected to Embankment Induced Lateral Soil Movements

Abstract: Damage to piles supporting structures, bridge abutments, and utilities can occur as a result of the construction of nearby embankments. This is because the lateral displacements resulting from these construction activities can induce forces and moments in the piles. The resulting stresses can be significant particularly when soft soil deposits are present and the lateral soil displacements are large. This paper describes a simplified numerical procedure based on finite-element method for analyzing the response of single piles to lateral soil movements. The flexural bending of the pile is modeled by beam elements. The complex phenomenon of the pile-soil interaction is modeled by hyperbolic soil springs. A framework for determining the soil parameters for use in the analysis is summarized here. Comparisons are made between the observed behavior of full-scale tests and centrifuge model tests and those computed by the proposed numerical method. Based on parametric studies, empirical design solutions for pile foundation systems at the base of a sloped embankment are presented.

Efficient Longitudinal Seismic Fragility Assessment of a Multispan Continuous Steel Bridge on Liquefiable Soils

Abstract: The increased failure potential of aging U.S. highway bridges and their susceptibility to damage during extreme events necessitates the development of efficient reliability assessment tools to prioritize maintenance and rehabilitation interventions. Reliability communication tools become even more important when considering complex phenomena such as soil liquefaction under seismic hazards. Currently, two approaches are widely used for bridge reliability estimation under soil failure conditions via fragility curves: liquefaction multipliers and full-scale two- or three-dimensional bridge-soil-foundation models. This paper offers a computationally economical yet adequate approach that links nonlinear finite-element models of a three-dimensional bridge system with a two-dimensional soil domain and a one-dimensional set of p-y springs into a coupled bridge-soil-foundation CBSF system. A multispan continuous steel girder bridge typical of the central and eastern United States along with heterogeneous liquefiable soil profiles is used within a statistical sampling scheme to illustrate the effects of soil failure and uncertainty propagation on the fragility of CBSF system components. In general, the fragility of rocker bearings, piles, embankment soil, and the probability of unseating increases with liquefaction, while that of commonly monitored components, such as columns, depends on the type of soil overlying the liquefiable sands. This component response depen- dence on soil failure supports the use of reliability assessment frameworks that are efficient for regional applications by relying on simplified but accepted geotechnical methods to capture complex soil liquefaction effects.

Finite element analysis of contact problems

Abstract: A finite element procedure for modeling the interaction of contacting bodies is developed and illustrated. The model is capable of accounting for both slippage and separation of the mating surfaces. In addition, the bond springs, which in certain situations are used in the nonslip model, can be used to capture local deformation phenomena such as edge effects and local deformation caused by asperities, etc. The capabilities of the model for representing reinforced concrete bond, reinforced soil bond, soil structure interaction, and testing machine-sample interaction are considered. Numerical examples are given for modeling of concrete-reinforcement bond, pile-soil interaction, and footing-soil interaction; the results for the first two examples are compared to available experimental results.