Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539

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Journal of Rock Mechanics and

Geotechnical Engineering
journal homepage: www.rockgeotech.org

Full length article

Lateral response of pile foundations in liqueable soils

Asskar Janalizadeh, Ali Zahmatkesh*
Babol University of Technology, Babol, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Liquefaction has been a main cause of damage to civil engineering structures in seismically active areas.
Received 6 March 2015 The effects of damage of liquefaction on deep foundations are very destructive. Seismic behavior of pile
Received in revised form foundations is widely discussed by many researchers for safer and more economic design purposes. This
5 May 2015
paper presents a pseudo-static method for analysis of piles in liqueable soil under seismic loads. A free-
Accepted 6 May 2015
Available online 11 June 2015
eld site response analysis using three-dimensional (3D) numerical modeling was performed to deter-
mine kinematic loads from lateral ground displacements and inertial loads from vibration of the su-
perstructure. The effects of various parameters, such as soil layering, kinematic and inertial forces,
Keywords:
Pile foundations
boundary condition of pile head and ground slope, on pile response were studied. By comparing the
Lateral spreading numerical results with the centrifuge test results, it can be concluded that the use of the p-y curves with
Liquefaction various degradation factors in liqueable sand gives reasonable results.
Pseudo-static method 2015 Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Production and hosting by
Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The liquefaction is one of the challenging issues in geotechnical
engineering and it damages structures and facilities during earth-
quakes. This phenomenon was reported as the main cause of
damage to pile foundations during the major earthquakes (Kramer,
1996). In many earthquakes around the world, extensive damage to
piles of bridges and other structures due to liquefaction and lateral
spreading has been observed (Boulanger et al., 2003). Failures were
observed in both sloping and level grounds and were often
accompanied with settlement and tilting of the superstructure
(Adhikari and Bhattacharya, 2008). The loss of soil strength and
stiffness due to excess pore pressure in liqueable soil may develop
large bending moments and shear forces in the piles. If the residual
strength of the liqueable soil is less than the static shear stresses
caused by a sloping site or a free surface such as a river bank, sig-
nicant lateral spreading or downslope displacements may occur.
The moving soil can exert damaging pressures against the piles,
leading to failure (Finn and Fujita, 2002). The performance of
structures above piles depends widely on the behavior of pile
foundations under earthquake loading. During past earthquakes,
because of inadequacy of the pile to sustain large shear forces and
bending moments, the extensive damage in liqueable soil has
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 98 9158342367.
E-mail address: A.zahmatkesh@stu.nit.ac.ir (A. Zahmatkesh).
Peer review under responsibility of Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chi-
nese Academy of Sciences.
1674-7755 2015 Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sci-
ences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrmge.2015.05.001
been caused due to both lateral ground movement and inertial
loads transmitted to piles. Under earthquake loading, the perfor-
mance of piles in liqueed ground is a complex problem due to the
effects of progressive buildup of pore water pressures and decrease
of stiffness in the saturated soil (Liyanapathirana and Poulos, 2005).
These effects involve inertial interaction between structure and pile
foundation, signicant changes in stiffness and strength of soils due
to increase of pore water pressures, large lateral loads on piles,
kinematic interaction between piles and soils, nonlinear response
of soils to strong earthquake motions, kinematic loads from lateral
ground displacements, and inertial loads from vibration of the su-
perstructure (Bradley et al., 2009; Gao et al., 2011).
Various approaches including shaking table and centrifuge tests
and also various numerical methods have been developed for the
dynamic response analysis of single pile and pile group. The soile
pileestructure interaction has been investigated using the centri-
fuge test (e.g. Finn and Gohl, 1987; Chang and Kutter, 1989; Liu and
Dobry, 1995; Hushmand et al., 1998; Wilson, 1998; Abdoun and
Dobry, 2002; Su and Li, 2006) and shaking table test (e.g. Mizuno
and Liba, 1982; Yao et al., 2004; Tamura and Tokimatsu, 2005;
Han et al., 2007; Gao et al., 2011; Haeri et al., 2012). The obvious
advantage of shaking table and centrifuge tests is the ability to
obtain detailed measurements of response in a series of tests
designed to physically evaluate the importance of varying earth-
quake characteristics (e.g. level of shaking, frequency content), soil
prole characteristics, and/or pileesuperstructure characteristics
(Wilson, 1998). However, some limitations exist in centrifuge tests,
for example, sand grains in centrifuge tests correspond to bigger
gravel particles in prototype (Towhata, 2008).
To simulate the piles in liqueable soil layers, Finn and Fujita
(2002), Klar et al. (2004), Oka et al. (2004), Uzuoka et al. (2007),
 A. Janalizadeh, A. Zahmatkesh / Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539
Cheng and Jeremic (2009), Comodromos et al. (2009), and Rahmani
and Pak (2012) used three-dimensional (3D) nite element
method. The complexity and time-consuming nature of 3D
nonlinear nite element method for dynamic analysis makes it
useful only for very large practical projects or research and not
feasible for engineering practice. However, it is possible to obtain
reasonable solutions for nonlinear response of pile foundations
with fewer computations by relaxing some of the boundary con-
ditions in full 3D analysis (Finn and Fujita, 2002).
The simple approach for modeling and simulation of the piles in
liqueed grounds is based on scaling of p-y springs, where p and y
are the soil resistance per unit length of the pile and pile lateral
displacement, respectively. Because of complexity and time-
consuming of two-dimensional (2D) and 3D numerical modeling,
most of the designers and researchers prefer to use one-
dimensional (1D) Winkler method based on nite element or
nite difference method for the seismic analysis of pile foundations.
In pseudo-static method, a static analysis is carried out to obtain the
maximum response (deection, shear force and bending moment)
developed in the pile due to seismic loading. In Winkler models, p-y
curves are used to dene the behavior of the nonlinear spring at any
depth. These p-y curves can be obtained from the results of model
tests or eld (Liyanapathirana and Poulos, 2005). The Winkler
assumption is that the soilepile interaction resistance at any depth
is related to the pile shaft displacement at that depth only, inde-
pendent of the interaction resistances above and below (Wilson,
1998).
This pseudo-static method has been suggested early by Miura
et al. (1989), Miura and ORourke (1991), Liu and Dobry (1995),
JRA (1996), AIJ (1998) and recently by Liyanapathirana and Poulos
(2005) and Elahi et al. (2010). This method for pile seismic anal-
ysis sometimes underestimates, and sometimes overestimates
shears, moments and deection of the piles. However, in many
practical conditions, the results of pseudo-static method are
reasonable (Tabesh, 1997).
In this paper, a pseudo-static method has been applied for esti-
mation of the response of pile during dynamic loading. First, de-
nition of the geometry and the soil modeling parameters are
presented. Next, the numerical model is vertied by means of the
centrifuge test. And then the effects of various parameters, including
soil layering, kinematic and inertial forces, boundary condition of
pile head and ground slope, on the behaviors of piles are studied.
2. Numerical analysis
All simulations were conducted using the open-source compu-
tational platform OpenSees (McKenna and Fenves, 2007). This
platform allows for developing applications to simulate the per-
formance of structural and geotechnical systems subjected to static
and seismic loadings. In this paper, the steps for calculation of pile
response are summarized as follows:
(1) A free-eld site response analysis was performed during
the dynamic loading using 3D numerical modeling. From this
analysis, time history of ground surface acceleration and the
maximum ground displacement along the length of the pile can
be calculated.
(2) The dynamic analysis was performed using the time history of
ground surface acceleration calculated in Step 1 for pile length
above ground and superstructure with a xed base. From this
analysis, the maximum acceleration of superstructure can be
calculated.
(3) In 1D Winkler analysis, the maximum soil displacement prole
calculated in Step 1 and the maximum acceleration of super-
structure in Step 2 were applied to the pile as shown in Fig. 1.
533
First, the time history of the ground surface acceleration and the
maximum ground displacement at each depth were obtained from
the free-eld site response analysis. Taboada and Dobry (1993) and
Gonzalez et al. (2002) showed that the pore pressure time histories
recorded at the same elevation are identical, indicating the 1D
behavior of the model. In free-eld analysis, the model consists of a
single column of 3D brick elements. The soil layers were modeled
using cubic 8-noded elements with u-p formulation in which each
node has four degrees of freedom: three for soil skeleton dis-
placements and one for pore water pressure. To consider the effect
of the laminar box in the numerical simulation, nodes at the same
depths were constrained to have equal displacements in the hori-
zontal and vertical directions. The pore water pressures were
allowed to freely develop for all nodes except those at the surface
and above the water table. The bottom boundary was assumed
xed in all directions.
The material model plays a key role in the numerical simulation
of the dynamic behavior of liqueable soils. The model in Dafalias
and Manzari (2004), a critical state two-surface plasticity model,
was used in this paper. This model requires fteen material pa-
rameters and two state parameters to describe the behavior of sands
and has been amply tested for simulating the behavior of granular
soils subjected to monotonic and cyclic loadings (Jeremic et al.,
2008; Taiebat et al., 2010; Rahmani and Pak, 2012). The key advan-
tages of the model are that (1) it is relatively simple and (2) it has a
unique calibration of input parameters. Thus, a single set of pa-
rameters independent of void ratio and effective consolidation
stress level was used for the Dafalias and Manzaris material model.
Table 1 presents the material parameters for Nevada sand. The
additional parameters used for free-eld analysis are presented in
Table 2. It can be noted that at the onset of liquefaction, change of soil
particles creates additional pathways for water. This leads to a sig-
nicant increase in permeability coefcient (Rahmani et al., 2012).
In this study, the permeability coefcient value was increased 10
times the initial value (suggested by Rahmani et al. (2012)).
For free-eld analysis, the simulations were carried out in two
loading stages. At the rst stage, the soil skeleton and pore water
weight were applied to soil elements. The values of stress and strain
in this stage were used as initial values for the next stage of loading.
At the second stage, dynamic analysis was performed by applica-
tion of an input motion to the model base.
F=Msxamax
s
Pile p-y materials
Fig. 1. A beam on the nonlinear Winkler foundation (BNWF) model for pseudo-static
analysis.
534 A. Janalizadeh, A. Zahmatkesh / Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539

Table 1
Material parameters for Nevada sand (Rahmani and Pak, 2012).

Elasticity Critical state Yield surface parameter, m Plastic modulus Dilatancy Dilatancy-fabric

G0 n M c lc e0 x h0 ch nb A0 nd zmax cz

150 0.05 1.14 0.78 0.027 0.83 0.45 0.02 9.7 1.02 2.56 0.81 1.05 5 800

Table 2 sandy soils (particularly vulnerable to liquefaction and lateral

Additional parameters for pseudo-static and free-eld analysis (Wilson, 1998; spreading during dynamic loading) also occurred. Therefore, the
Rahmani and Pak, 2012).
excessive forces imposed on the foundation due to ground
Dr (%) Permeability Saturated unit Dry unit weight Friction Void displacement led to shearing of the piles and subsequent structural
(m s1) weight (kN m3) (kN m3) angle ( ) ratio, e collapse of the superstructure. There are three methods for
35 7.05  105 19.11 14.9 30 0.743 considering the inuence of liquefaction on p-y curves in sand. In
80 3.7  105 19.91 16.2 39.5 0.594 the rst case, the lateral resistance of liqueable sand is assumed to
be zero. This method can lead to large design responses and high
construction costs which may be very conservative (Rollins et al.,
In the second step, after free-eld analysis, pile length above
2005). Another approach is to treat liqueable sand as undrained
ground and superstructure were modeled. The pile was modeled as
soft clay and use the p-y curves for soft clay. The undrained shear
beam column elements with elastic section properties. The super-
strength used in this case is obtained as a ratio of undrained shear
structure was modeled at the pile head. Generally, the super-
strength to initial effective overburden stress using eld data, and it
structures above the pile foundations are multi-degree of freedom
is a function of overburden stress and relative density (Rollins et al.,
systems, but in the design of pile foundations, the superstructure
2005; Varun, 2010). The third method for the simulation of pile
was modeled as a single mass at the pile head to simplify the
response in liqueable soils is the use of reduction factors, called p-
analysis. In this step, the base model was also xed.
multipliers. The p-y curves in liqueable sand are multiplied by a
The model considered for the third step (pseudo-static analysis)
factor usually between 0.01 and 0.3 to decrease the strength of sand
is shown in Fig. 1. There are two versions of the pseudo-static BNWF
due to liquefaction (Rollins et al., 2005; Brandenberg et al., 2007;
method. These two methods are different in the way in which the
Varun, 2010). In this paper, the third method (p-multipliers) was
lateral load on pile due to ground movement (kinematic load) is
used. The free-eld soil displacement and lateral force in head pile
considered. The rst BNWF requires free-eld soil movements as an
were imposed incrementally using a static load control integrator.
input. The free-eld soil displacements are imposed on the free
ends of the p-y springs due to lateral dilatation layers. In the second
BNWF, the limit pressures over the depth of the lateral spreading 3. Validation of the proposed method
soil were applied and the p-y springs were removed in this interval.
In case of limit pressure, interaction of the soil and pile was not The performance and ability of the proposed approach to
modeled, because the analysis is simple and can be done by hand simulate pile behavior in liqueable soil have been demonstrated
calculation. Inertia forces from superstructure are represented as by comparison between the numerical simulations and centrifuge
static forces applied simultaneously with lateral spreading de- tests performed by Wilson (1998). In these tests, the soil prole
mands. When limit pressures are applied directly to the pile nodes, consisted of two horizontal layers of saturated uniformly graded
bending moments and cap displacements depend on acceleration Nevada sand (see Fig. 2). On prototype scale, the lower layer was
records and are greatly overpredicted for small to medium motions. 11.4 m thick with relative density of 80% (dense) and the upper was
This can be explained by the fact that the lateral spreading dis- 9.1 m thick with relative density of 35% (loose). The single pile was a
placements were not large enough to mobilize limit pressures and
actual pressures are smaller than limit pressures. However, for large
motions, the pile cap displacements were considerably under-
predicted (Brandenberg et al., 2007). In this paper, the free-eld soil
movement was used as an input. The cap mass, multiplied by the
maximum acceleration of the superstructure obtained from Step 2
as a lateral force (F), was applied at the pile head. The material
properties of p-y curves for non-liqueed sand were computed
based on API (1987). These curves are dened by the following
equation:
 
Kz
P Pu tanh y (1)
Pu

where Pu is the ultimate bearing capacity at depth z, K is the initial

modulus of subgrade reaction, and y is the lateral deection. The
initial tangent stiffness (Kin), based on Eq. (1), is obtained as
Kin Kz. The p-y curves were modeled as zero-length elements
with PySimple1 materials. Under dynamic loading, the piles are
inuenced by kinematic loads from lateral ground displacements
and inertial loads from vibration of the superstructure. Fig. 1 shows
an idealized schematic of the BNWF model for kinematic (F) and
inertial (Ds) loads. The loss of bearing capacity for piles in loose Fig. 2. Layout of the model for centrifuge test by Wilson (1998).
 A. Janalizadeh, A. Zahmatkesh / Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539 535

steel pipe of 0.67 m in diameter, 18.8 m in length, and 19 mm in wall 25

thickness. The pile tip was about 3.8 m above the container base.
Case (1)
The superstructure mass (Ms) was 49.1 Mg. Properties of Nevada
sand with Dr 35% and 80% are presented in Table 2. The Kobe Case (2)
20

Superstructure displacement (cm)

Case (3)
acceleration record (Fig. 3) was used as an input to shake model.
Centrifuge test
It is important to specify stiffness and lateral resistance of the p-
y curves in liqueable soil as explained in Section 2. Three cases
were considered to evaluate the effects of variations in stiffness and 15
lateral resistance of the p-y curves on the testing results. These
cases include: (1) use of the p-y curves without the inuence of
liquefaction; (2) use of the p-y curves with a constant degradation 10
factor in liqueed sand; and (3) use of the p-y curves with various
degradation factors in liqueable sand. In case (2), different
degradation factors can be considered between 0.05 and 0.5 to
reduce the strength of liqueable soil. In this case, because of the 5
small strength of liqueable soil, especially that of surface ground, a
degradation factor of 0.1 was considered. In case (3), variation in
degradation factor with depth was taken from a small value (top of 0
liqueable layer) to 1.0 (bottom of liqueable layer). An exponential 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35
decay function from bottom to top of liqueed layer is proposed as Superstructure acceleration (g)

R R0 eH lnR0
z Fig. 4. Comparison of superstructure displacement in various cases with the centrifuge
(2)
tests by Wilson (1998).

where R is a degradation factor, as a function of distance from the

top of the layer (z); H is the liqueable layer thickness; and R0 is the
degradation factor at the top of the layer. Both the ultimate resis-
tance and initial stiffness of the p-y curves in the liqueable layer
were taken to be R% of their unreduced magnitudes.
In free-eld analysis under the Kobe acceleration record scaled
to 0.04g, 0.12g and 0.22g, because of the ground level, lateral
displacement (Ds) was less than about 5 cm and the effects of ki-
nematic loads on seismic response are small. Therefore, in these
tests, it is reasonable to only consider the inertial loads for calcu-
lation of the pile response. The superstructure displacement was
calculated using acceleration of the superstructure obtained from
the tests carried out by Wilson (1998). The comparison between the
observed and simulated results of superstructure displacement is
shown in Fig. 4. In cases (2) and (3), by considering the centrifuge
test results, the best predictions were obtained with degradation
factor of 0.1. These results clearly illustrate that the performance
and accuracy of BNWF mainly depend on the accuracy in selection
of the correct curves. As seen in Fig. 4, the deections observed
during the centrifuge test are much larger than those simulated
without the inuence of liquefaction. This is due to the loss of
bearing capacity for the piles in loose and medium sandy soils
during dynamic loading. It can be noted that use of constant
degradation factors at various depths gives unreasonable results.
The pile head displacements have a good agreement with the
available experimental data in case (3).
Fig. 5 compares the maximum bending moment recorded from
the centrifuge tests with that obtained from present analysis. In this
gure, variation of R is similar to case (3) and Fig. 5 shows that the
results obtained from the numerical analysis agree with the values
recorded during the centrifuge test. It can be said that increasing
the value of R from a small value at the top of the layer to 1.0 at the
bottom of the layer produces a reasonable response for the piles.
Therefore, this method was used for subsequent analysis.
4. Results and discussion
In this section, the behavior of pile for various conditions is
discussed. The soil prole is the same as the one used in the
centrifuge test performed by Wilson (1998). The prole has two
layers: the upper layer is liqueable (relative density of 35%) while
Bending moment (kN m)
0 500 1000 1500
0
5
Depth (m)

10

Simulation
15 Centrifuge test

20

Fig. 3. Acceleration record of Kobe earthquake scaled to 0.22g used in the centrifuge Fig. 5. Comparison of bending moment proles with the centrifuge tests by Wilson
test by Wilson (1998). (1998).
536 A. Janalizadeh, A. Zahmatkesh / Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539

the lower layer (relative density of 80%) is not. Three different Bending moment (kN m)
ground slopes of 1%, 2%, and 4% were considered. The water table
-500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
was supposed to be 1 m, 2 m, 3 m, and 4 m below the ground. This 0
means that the thicknesses of non-liqueable surface crust are 1 m,
2 m, 3 m, and 4 m. The input motion for the model was a 20-cycles
-2
sinusoidal wave with a frequency of 2 Hz and the peak acceleration
1%
of 0.5g. It should be noted that the intensity, frequency content (e.g.
predominant period) and the duration of strong shaking are -4 2%
important characteristics of an earthquake (Rathje et al., 1998).
4%
These characteristics affected the response of piles. The pile re-

sponses largely depend on the shaking amplitude. Increase in the
shaking amplitude (because of more reduction of restraint on liq-
ueed soil) resulted in a decrease in the restraint against bending
under the lateral load, and the maximum bending moment in piles
signicantly increased (Gao et al., 2011). The frequency also had a
signicant effect on pile response.
The free-eld analysis showed that displacement of level
ground is signicantly less than that of the sloping ground. Fig. 6
compares the displacement of sloping ground when the thickness
of the non-liqueable surface layer is 1 m and 2 m with ground
slope of 2%. This gure highlights the importance of non-liqueable
surface layer as a key parameter on ground displacement. When
liquefaction occurs in sloping ground, because of displacements
developing up to several meters, large lateral forces may act on the
pile. This phenomenon is commonly called lateral spreading (Klar
et al., 2004). In lateral spreading, the driving forces only exceed
the resisting forces during those portions of the earthquake that
impose net inertial forces in the downslope direction. Each cycle of
net inertial forces in the downslope direction causes the driving
forces to exceed the resisting forces along the slip surface, resulting
in progressively and incrementally lateral movement (Day, 2002).
Based on the results of free-eld analysis, the displacement prole
can be matched with constant displacement across the upper soil
layer, a linear variation across the liqueable and non-liqueable
layers.
The variations in bending moment along piles in different
ground slopes for various conditions are presented in Figs. 7e10.
The results show that in sloping grounds, when a non-liqueable
soil layer overlies a liqueable soil layer and piles are embedded
in the non-liqueable soil layer, the lateral spreading has more
inuences on the damage of piles. An increase in bending moment
Depth (m)
-6
-8
-10
-12
-14
Fig. 7. Variations in bending moment along the pile in different sloping grounds (free
head, without superstructure).
occurred as the ground slope increased. After liquefaction, if the
static shear stress caused by sloping ground is more than the shear
strength of liqueable soil, the non-liqueable surface crust over-
lying a liqueed soil layer can slide with a considerable amount of
displacement. In this condition (lateral spreading), the non-
liqueable surface layer was carried along with the underlying
fully liqueable soil and a large lateral force was imposed on the
embedded piles (Ashour and Ardalan, 2011). This force due to the
lateral movement of the non-liqueable layer has the potential to
induce large bending moments in the piles leading to failure.
The boundary condition of the pile head has an important effect
on the pile responses (moments, shear and deections). In layered
soil deposits, a liqueable soil layer is overlain by a non-liqueable
layer; when the pile head is free, the maximum bending moment
Bending moment (kN m)

Displacement (m) -2000 -1000 0 1000 2000

0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
0
-2 1%
-2
2%
-4 -4
4%
-6
-6
Depth (m)

-8
Depth (m)

-10 -8
1m
-12
2m
-10
-14

-16 -12

-18
-14
-20

Fig. 6. Displacement prole at two different thicknesses of non-liqueable surface Fig. 8. Variations in bending moment along the pile in different sloping grounds (xed
layer when the ground slope is 2%. head, without superstructure).
 A. Janalizadeh, A. Zahmatkesh / Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539 537

Bending moment (kN m) inuence of liquefaction on free-eld soil response and soilepilee
-500 0 500 1000 1500 2000 structure interaction, the magnitudes of inertial and kinematic
0 loads change (Han et al., 2007). When the acceleration of ground
surface or superstructure mass is large or lateral dynamic stiffness
-2 of pile group due to pile and/or soil stiffness is small, the inertial
1% effects may become important (Elahi et al., 2010). Figs. 7 and 8
2% illustrate that in the absence of a superstructure, the maximum
-4 bending moment near the pile head decreases signicantly, and a
4% major difference is observed at that location between piles with
-6 and without superstructure, but the values are approximately un-
Depth (m)

-8
-10
-12
-14
Fig. 9. Variations in bending moment along the pile in different sloping grounds (free
head, with superstructure).
develops at a depth corresponding to the interface of liqueable
and non-liqueable layers (see Figs. 7 and 9). When the pile head is
xed, the maximum bending moment develops at two locations:
(1) at the pile head and (2) at the interface of the two layers (see
Figs. 8 and 10).
The dynamic effects during earthquake on deep foundations are
critically important. These effects include the kinematic forces
applied by the soil to the pile foundation and the inertial forces of
the superstructure due to earthquake. The combination of cyclic
horizontal kinematic loads due to ground displacements and in-
ertial loads from the superstructure determines the critical load for
piles during the shaking phase (Cubrinovski et al., 2009). The ki-
nematic loads depend on the magnitude of ground deformations
and the stiffness of the soil during a given loading cycle. Due to the
changed at large depths (Figs. 9 and 10). In other words, the same
kinematic forces were developed in the piles with and without
superstructure. At greater depths, where the inertial effects from
the superstructure are less signicant, pile damage can occur due to
the lateral loads arising from lateral spreading (the excessive
ground movement). Both inertial and kinematic loads can cause
damages at the pile head.
The inertia effects of the superstructure before development of
the pore water pressures and liquefaction are important and the
kinematic effects can often be neglected. Ishihara (1997) stated that
inertial forces are the cause of development of the maximum
bending moment near the pile head. These forces are predominant
before liquefaction and are conrmed by the results of Figs. 7e10. If
the shaking continues after liquefaction, the inertial forces are
combined with kinematic forces on the pile foundation arising from
large cyclic ground deformations. It can be said that the kinematic
loading in the areas of lateral spreading with relatively strong non-
liqueable surface layers is important. Then, the pile failure near
the bottom of the liqueable layer is likely inuenced by kinematic
loads from the liqueable layer, while failure near the pile head is
likely inuenced by inertial loads from the superstructure and ki-
nematic loads from the non-liqueable layer. It should be noted
that the bending moments are underpredicted when the structural
inertia forces are neglected.
The pile response is sensitive to the thickness of the non-
liqueable surface layer (H) and thickness of the liqueable layer
(L). Fig. 11 shows variations in pile head displacement when the
ratio of thickness (H/L) for different sloping grounds is increased.
The pile head displacement increases to a peak value and then
decreases with subsequent increase in thickness ratio. As the
thickness of the non-liqueable surface layer increases, horizontal
kinematic loads due to ground displacements also increase and

60

1%
50 2%
Pile head displacement (cm)

4%

40

30

20

10

0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
H /L
Fig. 10. Variations in bending moment along the pile in different sloping grounds
(xed head, with superstructure). Fig. 11. Variations in pile head displacement against ratio of thickness (H/L).
538 A. Janalizadeh, A. Zahmatkesh / Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 7 (2015) 532e539
result in higher pile head displacement. However, when the non-
liqueable surface layer is thick, because of increasing effective
stress on the liqueable layer, ground displacements are decreased,
resulting in smaller values of pile head displacement. In addition,
when the non-liqueable surface layer is thick, due to increase of
static shear stress in ground with great slopes, ground displace-
ment and pile head displacement also increase.
5. Conclusions
This paper presents a method for analysis of piles in liqueable
soil under seismic loads. Three steps for calculation of pile response
were: (1) free-eld response analysis using 3D numerical modeling
for calculation of ground surface acceleration and the maximum
ground displacement along the length of the pile, (2) the dynamic
analysis of pile length above ground and superstructure for calcu-
lation of the maximum acceleration of superstructure, and (3) 1D
Winkler analysis for calculation of pile response. All simulations in
three steps were conducted using the open-source computational
platform OpenSees. After verication of the numerical model using
a centrifuge test, analyses were carried out for various conditions.
By comparing the numerical results with the centrifuge test, it
can be concluded that using the p-y curves with various degrada-
tion factors in liqueable sand produces reasonable results. In
addition, the non-liqueable surface layer especially in sloping
ground plays a key role in ground displacement. When the pile
head is free, the maximum bending moment develops at a depth
corresponding to the interface of liqueable and non-liqueable
layers. When the pile head is xed, there are two locations for
developing the maximum bending moment: (1) at the pile head
and (2) at the interface of the two layers. Moreover, at greater
depths, where inertial effects from the superstructure are less
signicant, pile damage may occur due to lateral loads arising from
lateral spreading. Both inertial and kinematic loads can cause
damages at the pile head.
Conict of interest
The author conrms that there are no known conicts of
interest associated with this publication and there has been no
signicant nancial support for this work that could have inu-
enced its outcome.
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