AbstractSoil liquefaction and associated

deformation is a major cause of earthquake-related

damage to piles and pile-supported structures.
Computational procedures for nonlinear soil-pile
interaction response commonly employ a 1D pile-soil
system, and simplify the effect of soil pressure by
linear or nonlinear p-y springs.
This paper presents a pilot 3D Finite Element
study of dynamic pile response in liquefied ground.
The numerical model is formulated using CYCLIC, a
geomechanics nonlinear finite element program
developed to analyze cyclic mobility and liquefaction
problems. In the current analysis, the pile and soil
domains are discretized using 3D brick elements. The
soil stress-strain behavior is represented by a
plasticity-based, effective-stress constitutive model.
This constitutive model is capable of simulating the
essential response characteristics of saturated
cohesionless soils, including shear-induced pore-
pressure generation (dilatancy) and cyclic mobility.
The computed results are compared to related
centrifuge testing results. Special attention is given to
the change in pile response characteristics due to
liquefaction and lateral spreading of the surrounding
soil.

KeywordsFinite Element Analysis, Pile,
Liquefaction


INTRODUCTION

Liquefaction and associated shear deformation is a
major cause of earthquake-related damage to piles and
pile-supported structures. Pile foundation damage due to
lateral spreading induced by liquefaction is documented
in numerous reports and papers [1-3].
The recognition of the importance of lateral ground
displacement on pile performance has led to the
development of analytical models capable of evaluating
the associated potential problems [4]. Modeling lateral
ground displacement and pile response involves complex
aspects of soil-structure interaction and soil behavior
under large strains. Currently computational procedures
for nonlinear soil-pile interaction response commonly
employ a 1D pile-soil system, and simplify the effect of
soil pressure by linear or nonlinear p-y springs. There is
not much effort devoted to the study of the piles in
liquefaction-induced lateral spreading using finite element
method (FEM).
This paper presents a pilot three-dimensional (3D)
Finite Element study of dynamic pile response in liquefied
ground. The numerical model is formulated using
CYCLIC, a geomechanics nonlinear finite element
program developed to analyze cyclic mobility and
liquefaction problems [5,6]. In CYCLIC, the soil stress-
strain behavior is represented by a plasticity-based,
effective-stress constitutive model. This constitutive
model is capable of simulating the essential response
characteristics of saturated cohesionless soils, including
shear-induced pore-pressure generation (dilatancy) and
cyclic mobility. Extensive calibration of CYCLIC has
been conducted with results from experiments and full-
scale response of earthquake simulations involving ground
liquefaction [7].
In this paper, salient features of the constitutive model
and the finite element formulation are presented first.
Thereafter, the numerical simulation procedures and
results are described and discussed.

FINITE ELEMENT FORMULATION

In CYCLIC, the saturated soil system is modeled as a
two-phase material based on the Biot [8] theory for porous
media. A numerical formulation of this theory, known as
u-p formulation (in which displacement of the soil
skeleton u, and pore pressure p, are the primary unknowns
[9,10]), was implemented [5,6,11]. This implementation
is based on the following assumptions: small deformation
and rotation, density of the solid and fluid is constant in
both time and space, porosity is locally homogeneous and
constant with time, incompressibility of the soil grains,
and equal accelerations for the solid and fluid phases.
The u-p formulation is defined by Chan [9] as two
equations: i) the equation of motion for the solid-fluid
mixture, and ii) the equation of mass conservation for the
fluid phase, incorporating equation of motion for the fluid
phase and Darcy's law. These two governing equations
may be expressed in the following finite element matrix
form [9]:


0 f Qp d B U M
s

T
= + +

& &

(1a)

0 f Hp p S U Q
p T
= + + &
&
(1b)

where M is the total mass matrix, U the displacement
vector, B the strain-displacement matrix, the effective
stress tensor (determined by the soil constitutive model
described below), Q the discrete gradient operator
coupling the solid and fluid phases, p the pore pressure
Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis of Dynamic Pile Behavior in
Liquefied Ground


Jinchi Lu
1
, Liangcai He
1
, Zhaohui Yang
1
, Tarek Abdoun
2
and Ahmed Elgamal
1

1
Department of Structural Engineering, University of California, San Diego, USA
2
Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY


vector, S the compressibility matrix, and H the
permeability matrix. The vectors
s
f and
p
f represent
the effects of body forces and prescribed boundary
conditions for the solid-fluid mixture and the fluid phase
respectively.
In equation (1a) (equation of motion), the first term
represents inertia force of the solid-fluid mixture,
followed by internal force due to soil skeleton
deformation, and internal force induced by pore-fluid
pressure. In equation (1b) (equation of mass
conservation), the first two terms represent the rate of
volume change for the soil skeleton and the fluid phase
respectively, followed by the seepage rate of the pore
fluid. Equations (1a) and (1b) are integrated in the time
domain using a single-step predictor multi-corrector
scheme of the Newmark type [5,9]. In the current
implementation, the solution is obtained for each time
step using the modified Newton-Raphson approach [5].

SOIL CONSTITUTIVE MODEL

The second term in equation (1a) is defined by the
soil stress-strain constitutive model. The finite element
program incorporates a soil constitutive model [5,11-13]
based on the original multi-surface-plasticity theory for
frictional cohesionless soils [14]. This model was
developed with emphasis on simulating the liquefaction-
induced shear strain accumulation mechanism in clean
medium-dense sands [6,7,12,13,15]. Special attention
was given to the deviatoric-volumetric strain coupling
(dilatancy) under cyclic loading, which causes increased
shear stiffness and strength at large cyclic shear strain
excursions (i.e., cyclic mobility).
The constitutive equation is written in incremental
form as follows [14]:

) ( :
p
E & & & =

(2)

where & is the rate of effective Cauchy stress tensor, &
the rate of deformation tensor,
p
& the plastic rate of
deformation tensor, and E the isotropic fourth-order
tensor of elastic coefficients. The plastic rate of
deformation tensor is defined by:
p
& = P L , where P is
a symmetric second-order tensor defining the direction of
plastic deformation in stress space, L the plastic loading
function, and the symbol denotes the McCauley's
brackets (i.e., L =max(L, 0)). The loading function L is
defined as: L = Q: & / H
where H
is the plastic
modulus, and Q a unit symmetric second-order tensor
defining yield-surface normal at the stress point (i.e., Q=
f f / ), with the yield function f selected of the
following form [16]:

0
) ( ) ) ( ( : ) ) ( (
2
3
2
0
2
0 0
=
+ + + = p p M p p p p f s s

(3)

in the domain of 0 p . The yield surfaces in principal
stress space and on the deviatoric plane are shown in Fig.
1. In equation 3, s p = is the deviatoric stress
tensor, p the mean effective stress, a second-order
kinematic deviatoric tensor defining the surface
coordinates, and M dictates the surface size. For
cohesionless soil,
0
p is a small positive value (1.0 kPa in
this paper) such that the yield surface size remains finite at
0 = p for numerical convenience (Fig. 1). For cohesive
soil,
0
p is related to cohesion. In the context of multi-
surface plasticity, a number of similar surfaces with a
common apex form the hardening zone (Fig. 1). Each
surface is associated with a constant plastic modulus.
Conventionally, the low-strain (elastic) moduli and plastic
moduli are postulated to increase in proportion to the
square root of p [14].
The flow rule is chosen so that the deviatoric
component of flow P = Q (associative flow rule in the
deviatoric plane), and the volumetric component P

defines the desired amount of dilation or contraction in
accordance with experimental observations. Consequently,
P
defines the degree of non-associativity of the flow
rule and is given by [5]:

P
1 ) / (
1 ) / (
2
2
+

=


(4)

Where p = /
2 / 1
) : ) 2 / 3 (( s s is effective stress ratio,

a material parameter defining the stress ratio along the

phase transformation (PT) surface [17], and a scalar
function controlling the amount of dilation or contraction
depending on the level of confinement and/or accumulated
plastic deformation [12]. The sign of
1 ) / (
2


dictates dilation or contraction. If negative, the stress point
lies below the PT surface and contraction takes place
(phase 0-1, Fig. 2). On the other hand, the stress point lies
above the PT surface when the sign is positive and dilation
occurs under shear loading (phase 2-3, Fig. 2). At low
confinement levels, accumulation of plastic deformation
may be prescribed (phase 1-2, Fig. 2) before the onset of
dilation [12].
A purely deviatoric kinematic hardening rule is
chosen according to [14]:

b p = &
(5)





Fig. 1: Conical yield surfaces for granular soils in principal
stress space and deviatoric plane (after [5,11,14,18])

Fig. 2: Shear stress-strain and effective stress path under
undrained shear loading conditions (after [5,11])
where

is a deviatoric tensor defining the direction of

translation and b is a scalar magnitude dictated by the
consistency condition. In order to enhance computational
efficiency, the direction of translation

is defined by a
new rule [5,12], which maintains the original Mroz [19]
concept of conjugate-points contact. Thus, all yield
surfaces may translate in stress space within the failure
envelope.

SIMULATION OF CENTRIFUGE EXPERIMENT

Centrifuge Experiment

In the centrifuge test reported by Abdoun [4], a single
pile model (model 3, Fig. 3) was tested to simulate the
response of the pile foundation subjected to the lateral
pressure of a liquefied soil due to lateral spreading. The
experiment was conducted using the rectangular, flexible-
wall laminar box container shown in Fig. 3. The soil
profile consists of two layers of fine Nevada sand
saturated with water: a top liquefiable layer of relative
density, Dr = 40% and 6m prototype thickness, and a
bottom slightly cemented nonliquefiable sand layer with
a thickness of 2m. The prototype single pile is 0.6m in

Fig. 3: Lateral spreading pile centrifuge model in two-layer soil
profile, model 3 (modified after [20])

diameter, 8m in length, has a bending stiffness, EI = 8000
kN/m2, and is free at the top. The model has an inclination
angle of 2 and is subjected to a predominantly 2Hz
harmonic base excitation with a peak acceleration of 0.3g.
The results of the test were documented in [4].

Numerical Modeling

The centrifuge test was simulated using the above-
described three-dimensional finite element program
CYCLIC. As shown in Fig. 4, the soil domain and the
single pile were discretized using 3D 8-node brick
elements. A half mesh configuration is used due to
geometrical symmetry. The boundary conditions were (i)
dynamic excitation was defined as the recorded base
acceleration, (ii) at any given depth, displacement degrees
of freedom of the downslope and upslope boundaries were
tied together (both horizontally and vertically using the
penalty method) to reproduce a 1D shear beam effect [5],
(iii) the soil surface was traction free, with zero prescribed
pore pressure, and (iv) the base and lateral boundaries
were impervious.
A static application of gravity (model own weight)
was performed before seismic excitation. The resulting
fluid hydrostatic pressures and soil stress-states served as
initial conditions for the subsequent dynamic analysis [7].


Fig. 4: Finite element mesh of model 3


With a mild inclination of 2, model 3 attempts to
simulate an infinite slope subjected to shaking parallel to
the slope [21]. However, it was noted that, in the
centrifuge test, the soil surface gradually lost the slope
and became level during the shaking phase. To simulate
such behavior of losing the surface slope, a horizontal
component of gravity varying with time was applied to
the finite element simulation. The load-time history of the
applied horizontal gravity component was calculated
based on the recorded lateral displacement at ground
surface (the second subplot in Fig. 7).
Figs. 5-8 display the computed and recorded lateral
accelerations, displacement, and pore pressures. In
general, good agreement was achieved between the
computed and recorded responses. At 2m depth,
accelerations virtually disappeared after about 4 seconds
due to liquefaction (A4, Fig. 6). Liquefaction was
reached down to a depth of 5.0m (Fig. 8), as indicated by
the pore-pressure ratio r
u
approaching 1.0 (r
u
= u
e
/
v

where u
e
is excess pore pressure, and
v
initial effective
vertical stress). The Nevada sand layer remained liquefied
until the end of shaking and beyond. Thereafter, excess
pore pressure started to dissipate.
The mild inclination of model 3 imposed a static
shear stress component (due to gravity), causing
accumulated cycle-by-cycle lateral deformation. The
recorded and computed u
e
histories both displayed a
number of instantaneous sharp pore pressure drops after
initial liquefaction (Fig. 8). These drops coincided with
the observed and computed acceleration spikes that
occurred exclusively in the negative direction.

-0.2
0
0.2
A1 (3.0m)
Experimental
Computed
-0.2
0
0.2
L
a
t
e
r
a
l
A
c
c
e
le
r
a
t
io
n

(
g
)
A2 (7.0m)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
-0.2
0
0.2
A3 (Input)
Time (sec)

Fig. 5: Model 3 recorded and computed acceleration time
histories (along the laminar box boundary)


-0.2
0
0.2
A4 (2.0m)
Experimental
Computed
-0.2
0
0.2
L
a
t
e
r
a
l

A
c
c
e
l
e
r
a
t
io
n

(
g
)
A5 (4.0m)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
-0.2
0
0.2
A6 (7.0m)
Time (sec)
(Experimental data unavailable)

Fig. 6: Model 3 recorded and computed acceleration time
histories (in the soil)


0
10
20
30
40
LVDT1 (Pile head)
Experimental
Computed
0
20
40
60
80
100
Surface (near LVDT2(.25m))
0
20
40
60
80
L
a
t
e
r
a
l
D
i
s
p
la
c
e
m
e
n
t

(
c
m
)
2.0m (near LVDT3(2.5m))
0
20
40
60
80
4.0m (near LVDT4(3.75m))
-8
-4
0
4
8
LVDT5 (6.0m)
0 5 10 15 20 25
-8
-4
0
4
8
LVDT6 (7.0m)
Time (sec)

Fig. 7: Model 3 recorded and computed lateral displacement
time histories

The permanent lateral displacement of the ground
surface after shaking is approximately 100cm. All lateral
displacements occurred in the top 6.0m within the
liquefiable sand layer. The top graph of Fig. 7 shows the
recorded and computed pile lateral displacement at the soil
surface during and after shaking. The computed pile
lateral pile lateral displacement increased to 40cm, and
decreased to approximately 20cm at the end of shaking,
indicating relative movement between pile and soil. The
bottom slightly cemented sand layer, as indicated in Fig.
7, did not slide with respect to the base of the laminar box.

0
2
4
6
8
10
12
r
u
= 1.0
E
x
c
e
s
s

p
o
r
e

p
r
e
s
s
u
r
e

(
K
P
a
)
PP1 (1.0m)
Experimental
Computed
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0
10
20
30
40
50
PP2 (5.0m)
Time (sec)

Fig. 8: Model 3 recorded and computed excess pore pressure
time histories


CONCLUSIONS

A 3D finite element study of dynamic pile response in
liquefied ground was presented in this paper. The results
from numerical simulation were compared to related
centrifuge testing results. In general, good agreement was
achieved between the computed and recorded responses.
The calibrated numerical model will be useful in
conducting additional parametric investigations.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The reported research was supported in part by the
Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center,
under the National Science Foundation Award Number
EEC-9701568, and by the National Science Foundation
(Grant No. CMS0084616). This support is most
appreciated.


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