Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156

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Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Nonlinear 3D finite element analysis of soil–pile–structure interaction

system subjected to horizontal earthquake excitation
Chuan Luo a, Xun Yang a, Changbao Zhan a, Xianlong Jin a,n, Zhenkun Ding b
a
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
b
Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute, Shanghai, China

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The dynamic response of a seismic soil–pile–structure interaction (SSPSI) system is investigated in this
Received 12 July 2015 paper by conducting nonlinear 3D finite element numerical simulations. Nonlinear behaviors such as
Received in revised form non-reflecting boundary condition and soil–pile–structure interaction modeled by the penalty method
22 October 2015
have been taken into account. An equivalent linear model developed from the ground response analysis
Accepted 7 February 2016
and the modified Drucker–Prager model are separately used for soil ground. A comparison of the two
models shows that the equivalent linear soil model results in an underestimated acceleration response of
Keywords: the structure under this ground shaking and the soil behavior should be considered as a fully-nonlinear
Soil–pile–structure interaction constitutive model in the design process of the SSPSI system. It was also observed that the dynamic
Ground response
response of the system is greatly affected by the nonlinearity of soil–pile interface and is not sensitive to
Equivalent linear
the dilation angle of the soil. Furthermore, the effect of the presence of pile foundations on SSPSI
Drucker–Prager
Seismic response response is also analyzed and discussed.
Penalty method & 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
FEM

1. Introduction The traditional equivalent linear method was initially intro-

The design of earthquake-resistant structures on soil and pile
foundation is one of the most important parts in the design of
important structures such as bridges, high-rise buildings and
nuclear facilities. Seismic Soil–Pile–Structure Interaction (SSPSI)
analysis is a vital step in the evaluation of the seismic response of
pile-supported structures [1]. The process, in which the response
of the soil, piles and structure would be dependent on and influ-
enced by the motion of each other, is referred to as soil–pile–
structure interaction.
Determination of the seismic response in the SSPSI system is a
complex process including the nonlinearity of soil, the kinematic
interaction between soil and piles, and the inertial interaction
between soil and structure. Several analytical and experimental
studies [1–13] have been carried out in recent years to predict the
response of soil, piles and structures due to ground motions.
Successful application of these approaches could be attributed to
careful consideration of soil properties in the analyses. There are
mainly two analytical approaches to model the soil nonlinearity
for dynamic response analysis of soil–pile–structure systems
under seismic excitation: the equivalent linear soil model and the
fully nonlinear soil model.
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jxlong@sjtu.edu.cn (X. Jin).
duced by Schnabel et al. [14] to approximate the actual nonlinear
hysteretic behavior of soil in layered sites, considering the effective
strain of soil as a constant fraction of the maximum strain. Ching
and Glaser [15] offered a 1D time-domain solution to predict the
seismic ground motion response based on the equivalent linear
formulation. An equivalent linear response spectrum method was
proposed and validated for nonlinear ground analysis [16]. Choi
et al. [17] carried out an earthquake response analysis of a large-
scale seismic test structure following an iterative linearization
procedure with the soil nonlinearity being taken into account. Kim
and Roesset [18] investigated the effect of nonlinear soil on the
response spectra of the motion at the base of the structure and
illustrated the importance of nonlinear soil behavior by comparing
the results with those assuming linear elastic soil behavior. A
three-dimensional finite element model of SSPSI system was
constructed and an equivalent linear model was used for soil by Lu
et al. [19], indicating that a significant error will occur if the
nonlinearity of soil is not considered. Other researchers have also
studied the seismic response of the structures using the equivalent
linear methods [20,21].
The equivalent linear method assumes that the soil properties
remain constant throughout the ground shaking process and the
strain-dependent shear modulus and the damping ratio of soil are
assessed in an average sense. It can only approximate certain
effects of soil nonlinearity. It was observed that the soil elements
tend to be not only too soft and overdamped under weak ground

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2016.02.005
0267-7261/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
146 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156

shaking but also too stiff and underdamped under strong ground u€ n , u_ n and un are the acceleration, velocity and displacement
shaking [11]. In addition, Yoshida [22] pointed out that the vectors respectively. Eq. (1) is integrated by an explicit central
equivalent linear method may sometimes underestimate the peak difference integration rule and can be written as follows:
acceleration response under weak ground shaking. In soil–pile–
u€ n ¼ M  1 ½Rn  C u_ n  F int
n ðun Þ ð2Þ
structure interactions, the typical soil deformation types that
would occur are plastic flow, expansion (dilation) that could occur Velocities and displacements are updated in each time step as
with shear deformation, soil compaction (change in volume) and follows:
soil distortion. Soil behaviors under earthquake show obvious
u_ n þ 1=2 ¼ u_ n  1=2 þ Δt n u€ n ð3Þ
nonlinear properties and a geometric nonlinearity caused by large
strain deformation [23]. Therefore, fully-nonlinear soil modeling is
un þ 1 ¼ un þ Δt n þ 1=2 u_ n þ 1=2 ð4Þ
more appropriate to reflect the dynamic behavior of the SSPSI
system [24,25]. The plastic behavior of soil has been investigated where Δt n ¼ ðΔt n þ Δt n þ 1 Þ=2.
in literatures [26–29]. Byrne et al. [30] discussed the advantages of The explicit integration scheme has a very important advantage
the nonlinear simulations over the equivalent linear method and that it improves the computational efficiency by using diagonal
adopted a fully nonlinear constitutive soil model in the seismic mass matrix because the inversion of mass matrix used in Eq. (2) is
response analysis of the SSPSI system. Moreover, the full non- trivial. One of the disadvantages of the explicit integration pro-
linearity of soil requires that the analysis be carried out using the cedure is the stability of the numerical integration. To achieve
finite element approach. Bentley and Naggar [31] studied the stability, the calculation time step size must be smaller than the
kinematic response of piles using the three-dimensional finite critical time step Δt cr , which is determined by the character length
element program ANSYS, with the soil modeled as an elastic of the element and its material properties. For a finite element
material and an elastic-plastic constitutive model using the mesh of constant strain and rate independent materials, the cri-
Drucker–Prager failure criteria. Cai et al. [6] analyzed the seismic tical time step can be calculated by
response of the structure using a 3D finite element subsystem
Δt cr r min ðle =ce Þ ð5Þ
methodology featuring the associative plasticity-based con- e
stitutive model to simulate the nonlinearity of soil. Kellezi et al. where le is the character length of the element and ce is the wave
[32] investigated the static and dynamic response of a windmill speed in the element.
with piled foundation employing the ABAQUS program and
simulated the soil with both the Mohr–Coulomb(MC) constitutive
2.2. Soil–pile–structure coupling method
model and the Drucker–Prager material model and the study of
sensitivity to dilation angles was carried out as well. Furthermore,
Slippage and separation often occur in the interface between
Mohr–Coulomb yield criterion with non-associated flow rule was
the soil and the structure and the piles during an earthquake. This
used to investigate the role of nonlinearity in the soil behavior
kind of phenomenon in engineering is also known as the contact.
[33]. The Drucker–Prager criterion was used for soil materials in
Contact refers to different subjects or different parts of one subject
the nonlinear response analyses of structure subjected to earth-
that have a common boundary. Contact surfaces are usually
quake excitations [34–36]. Nevertheless, the effects of soil non-
linearity on the dynamic response of the SSPSI system were not
discussed in detail. The elastic-perfectly plastic Drucker–Prager
model for soil using the LS-DYNA program in the seismic analysis
of the SSPSI system has been employed in this paper.
The main goal of our research is to propose a nonlinear three-
dimensional finite element model that is reasonably accurate and,
by comparing it with the equivalent linear model, to see if it is
necessary to use the fully nonlinear method to attain rigorous and
reliable results. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 briefly
introduces the explicit time integration scheme, the soil–pile–
structure coupling method and the nonlinear constitutive model
for soil. In Section 3, the equivalent soil model is determined and Fig. 1. The penalty contact method.
validated by ground response analyses using SHAKE91 and LS-
DYNA program. Section 4 gives a detailed description of the
modeling method used in the paper. In Section 5, comparison
results obtained from numerical simulations are analyzed and
discussed. Section 6 draws some brief conclusions about this
research.

2. Methodology

2.1. Explicit dynamic analysis

The equation of equilibrium governing the dynamic response of

a system in the finite element program at time t n is generally
expressed as:
M u€ n þ C u_ n þ F int
n ðun Þ ¼ Rn ð1Þ
where M is the mass matrix and C is the damping matrix; Rn is the
vector of externally applied loads; F int
n is the internal force vector; Fig. 2. Drucker–Prager yield surface and Mohr–Coulomb yield surface.
 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156 147

Table 1
The equivalent shear modulus and damping ratio of each soil layer.

Layer number The equivalent damping ratio The equivalent shear modulus
(%) (kPa)

1 0.036 28,440.9
2 0.074 18,864.84
3 0.084 19,870.32
4 0.114 13,598.01
5 0.103 24,323.19
6 0.089 42,517.71
7 0.099 37,011.47
8 0.064 116,540.7
9 0.067 113,380.6
10 0.109 56,498.75
11 0.111 57,839.4
12 0.117 55,349.63
13 0.139 43,427.43
14 0.143 42,326.19
15 0.095 84,556.61
16 0.122 58,318.21
17 0.085 105,576.1
18 0.076 124,776.1
19 0.077 125,542.1
20 0.073 137,895.3
21 0.071 134,447.9
22 0.013 1,483,906
23 0.013 1,559,078
24 0.012 1,602,793
25 0.008 6,366,773
26 0.008 7,914,839
27 0.008 9,985,982
28 0.007 13,509,168

Fig. 3. Evaluation of model fitting procedures for soil: (a) modulus reduction curve;
(b) damping curve.

Fig. 5. Variation of damping ratio with frequency.

not be any further processing; otherwise an interfacial contact

Fig. 4. Input horizontal ground motion.
composed of primary surfaces and secondary surfaces. There are
mainly three different methods to model contact interface in LS-
DYNA: the kinematic constraint method, the symmetrical penalty
function method and the parameters distribution method.
In this paper, the symmetrical penalty function method is
adopted to analysis the simulated soil–pile–structure interaction
interfaces due to its advantages of simpler algorithm, no noise,
being not easy to give rise to hourglass and more exact in
momentum conservation. The process can be described as follows:
the penalty function method would first check whether each slave
node penetrates the main surface in each step. If not, there would
force would be introduced between this node and the penetrated
surface, as is shown in Fig. 1. This contact force is in direct pro-
portion to the penetration depth and the master surface stiffness.
Its physical significance is equivalent to that of a normal spring
placed between the node and the penetrated surface to restrict
further penetration on the main surface from the node. The
symmetrical penalty function method carries out circular process
for the secondary node and primary node in each step with the
same algorithm.
2.3. Nonlinear constitutive law of soil
In seismic soil–pile–structure interactions, soil behaviors
usually show obvious nonlinear elastic–plastic properties and a
geometric nonlinearity caused by large strain deformation. In this
paper, the nonlinear soil behavior is considered to be governed by
an elastic-perfectly plastic constitutive model according to the
Drucker–Prager criterion. The Drucker–Prager criterion has been
adopted in many finite element analyses of soil dynamics.
148 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156

Fig. 6. Comparison of acceleration versus time history and corresponding response spectra for SHAKE91 and LS-DYNA at different soil layers: (a) layer 1; (b) layer 10;
(c) layer 25.

Trochanis [37] conducted three-dimensional study of piles

subjected to monotonic and cyclic loading and the soil material,
either clay or sand, is idealized as a Drucker–Prager elastoplastic
continum. It turned out that the agreement between the experi-
mental result and the finite element prediction was satisfactory.
In order to better estimate the frictional resistance and the
dilation angle of the soil, the modified Drucker–Prager model
(*MAT_DRUCKER_PRAGER) was incorporated in the LS-DYNA
Fig. 7. Three dimensional FE model of the soil and pile foundations.
program. It enables the shape of the yield surface to be distorted
into more realistic definition for soils [38].
As is shown in Fig. 2, the Drucker–Prager yield function based
on Mohr–Coulomb's yield criterion could be described as follows:
pffiffiffiffi 3. Ground response analysis
f ðσ Þ ¼ α I 1 þ J2  k ¼ 0 ð6Þ
In order to investigate the effects of soil nonlinearity on SSPSI
where f ðσ Þ is the yield function, I 1 is the first invariant of the
response, an equivalent linear model developed from the ground
deviatoric stress tensor, J 2 is the second deviatoric stress invariant;
response analysis and the modified Drucker–Prager model are
α and k are material parameters which can be calculated as:
separately adopted in the 3D finite element analysis of the whole
2 sin ϕ 6c cos ϕ system.
α ¼ pffiffiffi ; k ¼ pffiffiffi ð7Þ
3ð3 7 sin ϕÞ 3ð3 7 sin ϕÞ In the ground response analysis, the widely used SHAKE91 is
adopted to conduct equivalent linear seismic response analyses of
where ϕ is the soil internal friction angle and c is the soil cohesion horizontally layered soil deposits. The input data required include the
value. Here, the positive and negative signs indicate the tensile thickness of each soil layer, the maximum shear wave velocity V s , an
and compressive conditions, respectively. initial estimation of damping ratio, the unit weight of the soil layers
 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156 149

Table 3
Mechanical properties and parameters of nonlinear soil.

Layer Shear Poisson's Cohesion Friction Dilation angle (°)

number modulus ratio (kPa) angle (°)
(kPa) ψ ¼ φ=2 ψ ¼φ

1 3.48E þ 04 0.49 43.83 14.08 7.04 14.08

2 3.13E þ 04 0.49 43.83 14.08 7.04 14.08
3 4.40E þ 04 0.49 37.67 32 16 32
4 4.40E þ 04 0.49 37.67 32 16 32
5 6.93E þ 04 0.49 37.67 32 16 32
6 1.01E þ05 0.49 37.67 32 16 32
7 1.01E þ05 0.49 37.67 32 16 32
8 1.77Eþ 05 0.48 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
9 1.77Eþ 05 0.48 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
10 1.17E þ 05 0.49 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
11 1.22Eþ 05 0.49 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
12 1.22Eþ 05 0.49 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
13 1.10E þ05 0.49 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
14 1.10E þ05 0.49 31.5 11.27 5.635 11.27
15 1.60Eþ 05 0.48 38.13 9.55 4.775 9.55
16 1.33Eþ 05 0.49 38.13 9.55 4.775 9.55
17 1.88Eþ 05 0.48 60.57 14.33 7.165 14.33
18 2.11E þ05 0.48 60.57 14.33 7.165 14.33
19 2.13E þ 05 0.48 60.57 14.33 7.165 14.33
20 2.28E þ 05 0.48 60.57 14.33 7.165 14.33
21 2.55E þ 05 0.47 60.57 32 16 32
22 1.59Eþ 06 0.37 10,410 21.88 10.94 21.88
23 1.67Eþ 06 0.37 10,410 21.88 10.94 21.88
24 1.71E þ06 0.37 10,410 21.88 10.94 21.88
25 6.47E þ 06 0.35 10,620 54.8 27.4 54.8
26 8.01E þ06 0.34 10,620 54.8 27.4 54.8
27 1.01E þ07 0.32 10,620 54.8 27.4 54.8
28 1.36Eþ 07 0.31 10,620 54.8 27.4 54.8

and an appropriate calibration strategy to determine the viscous

damping (Rayleigh damping) coefficients is proposed and suc-
Fig. 8. Meshing and model components for: (a) structure without pile foundations; cessfully validated.
(b) pile-supported structure. The finite element model employing LS-DYNA program with
equivalent linear soil properties is then proposed in the ground
Table 2 response analysis. Viscous damping is important for describing the
Material properties for piles and structure in the model. response of dynamic systems. However, there is no such a clear
relationship between the physical phenomenon and the viscous
Parameters Parameter index Value
damping. Rayleigh damping which is proportional to a linear
Bulk mass density (kg/m3) ρ 2400 combination of mass and stiffness is used in the analysis. In this
Elasticity modulus (kPa) E 1.9891010 paper, Rayleigh damping is assumed as:
Poisson ratio ν 0.17
C ¼ αM þ β K ð8Þ

and the corresponding strain-compatible shear modulus and
damping. The effective shear strain recommended tends to be equal
to 65% of the maximum shear strain. A resonant column test and a
cyclic triaxial test are carried out for the soil. The shear modulus
reduction curves and damping curves that represent the silty clay,
sandy clay and rock respectively are shown in Fig. 3.
A 40-second Shanghai artificial earthquake time history record
of acceleration is used as the excitation. The time history of the
input motion in ground response analysis is shown in Fig. 4, which
has a peak acceleration of 0.131g and the time interval in the time
history is set to be 0.01 s. The input motion is loaded at the bottom
of bedrock.
After 16 steps of iterative calculation, convergence is achieved
for all soil layers and the equivalent shear modulus and damping
ratio are calculated and summarized in Table 1.
Although the 1D equivalent linear method has successfully
been adopted in the engineering practices, many engineering
problems cannot be simplified to the one- dimensional case but
require a soil–pile–structure interaction response analysis in two-
or three-dimensional conditions. Therefore, in the analysis, we
apply the results obtained by the 1D equivalent linear frequency-
domain analysis to the three-dimensional finite element approach
where M and K are the mass and stiffness matrices respectively; α
and β are mass-proportional and stiffness-proportional coeffi-
cients respectively.
Rayleigh damping does provide certain mathematical con-
veniences and is widely used in dynamic analysis. The Rayleigh
damping effect illustrated in Fig. 5 shows that the mass proportional
damping part significantly damps the modes at low frequencies. The
opposite effect can be seen for the stiffness proportional damping
part which dominates in high-frequency applications.
In this paper, an appropriate calibration of the damping coef-
ficients (Zhang [39]) is adopted as
α ¼ ξω; β ¼ ξ=ω ð9Þ
where ω is usually taken as the first natural frequency ω1 ¼ 2π f 1 .
The acceleration time histories and the corresponding response
spectra (damping ratio 0.05) at different layers' surface calculated
by SHAKE91 and LS-DYNA are compared in Fig. 6. A reasonably
good matching between the SHAKE91 and FE equivalent linear
analysis was achieved at each soil layer, both in terms of frequency
response and acceleration time histories. The difference of peek
ground acceleration results produced by the two methods is no
150 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156
Fig. 9. Maximum lateral deflections resting on model with equivalent linear soil
and nonlinear soil: (a) Structure response; (b) Pile response.
more than 8%. Thus the equivalent linear soil model is validated
and can be applied to the 3D finite element model.
Furthermore, the finite element method is a direct approach
and the entire SSPSI system is analyzed in a single step [40]. The
advantage of 3D finite element analysis lies in the ability to model
complex soil layers and its potential for solving three dimensional
soil–pile–structure interaction problems.
4. Modeling method
4.1. Modeling of soil–pile–structure system
Based on geometrical modeling, the three dimensional finite ele-
ment model of SSPSI system is developed. The model can be func-
tionally divided into three parts: soil, pile foundations and structure.
In order to simulate the infinite soil medium and to reduce the
effect of boundary conditions on the dynamic response of the system,
the size of the 3D soil model is set as 560 m  360 m  72 m, as is
shown in Fig. 7. The lateral boundary is chosen as 7.5 and 7 times the
lateral size of the building in x and y direction respectively. The total
number of soil elements and the associated nodes is 1,806,508 and
1,896,478 respectively.
When the height of soil elements is too large, it would be difficult
for the high frequency component of the shear wave to transmit
from the bottom to the ground surface. When the height of soil
elements is too small, the number of elements increases significantly
and this would lead to low computation efficiency. It has been
reported that in the case of a shear wave transmitted vertically, the
height of the element could be taken as (1/5–1/8) V s =f max , in which
V s is the velocity of shear wave and f max denotes the highest wave
frequency considered. The element size in the horizontal direction is
not as strict as that in height and is chosen to be 3–5hmax .
Fig. 8 shows the finite element model of the SSPSI system. It
shows that each pile has the same size of 40 m in length and 1.5 m
in diameter and the distance between the piles is about 3.5 m. In
this study, the pile foundation and the baseplate are modeled by
employing 3D 8-node hexahedron solid elements. Each node has
six degrees of freedom: translations in the x, y and z directions and
rotations about the x, y and z axes. The wall of the structure and
the shield building are mainly meshed with thick-shell elements
and the number of mesh layers in the thickness direction is no less
than two in order to attain accurate results. The floor of the
structure has been built with quadratic shell element to improve
the computation efficiency. The “Tied” contact is adopted for the
coupling of the dissimilar meshes of the structure and the pile
foundations. Through the tied contact algorithm [41], the two
meshes are connected to one another by constraining all the slave
nodes to the master surface all the time without requiring the
nodes to be perfectly bounded with each other.
This results in 816,969 elements and 1,005,358 nodes in the
structure model being added to the computational model. The
seismic excitation in this report is the same as that in the ground
analysis and is applied to the bottom boundary of the model in X
direction. The mechanical properties of the pile and the structure
are described in Table 2.
4.2. Nonlinear soil material parameters
The elastic–plastic behavior of soil is mainly defined by cohe-
sion, internal friction angle φ, dilation angle ψ , modulus of elas-
ticity and Poisson's ratio. A resonant column test and a cyclic
triaxial test are carried out for the soil. The angle of dilation
determines the amount of plastic volumetric strain of soil and is
assumed constant during plastic yielding. If the value of dilation
angle is the same as the friction angle ψ ¼ φ, then the associative
flow rule is adopted for the soil; otherwise the soil will follow the
non-associative plastic law. Different dilation angles ψ ¼ φ=2 and
ψ ¼ φ are adopted in this paper to estimate the effects of soil
dilation angle on the dynamic response of the system. The non-
linear properties of each soil layer are shown in Table 3.
4.3. Boundary conditions
In order to prevent the seismic waves from being reflected to
the soil–pile–structure model and contaminating the SSPSI ana-
lysis, wave boundaries have been used at the bottom or side of the
soil foundation [42,43]. In this analysis, non-reflecting boundary
conditions around the near field soil are introduced. The bound-
aries of the FE model would be connected with a series of viscous
dampers which ensure the absorption of the outgoing waves at the
boundary. This approach introduced by Cohen and Jennings [44]
was further improved by applying viscous normal and shear stress
to the boundaries in a manner as described in the following
equations:
σ n ¼  ρcd V n ð10Þ
 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156
Fig. 10. Time-history displacement results resting on model with equivalent linear soil and nonlinear soil at different points.
σ s ¼  ρc s V t
where ρ, cd , and cs are the material density, material longitudinal and
shear wave velocities of the transmitting media, respectively; V n and
V t are the particle velocities in the normal and tangential directions.
The boundary at the bottom of the soil foundation is assumed to
be horizontal and fixed in the vertical direction, while the displace-
ment of lateral boundaries is restricted in the normal direction.
4.4. Consideration of gravity
Study of the contact behaviors in the SSPSI model reveals that
the slippage of the interface and the frictional force are closely
related to the normal contact force at the interface. The interaction
force is greatly affected by the initial stress produced by gravity
and a significant error might occur if gravity is neglected in the
dynamic response analysis. Therefore the initial conditions caused
by self-weight should be considered in the analysis [45]. The
numerical simulation is performed in the following two stages:
First, the bottom boundary of the soil field is fixed and the gravity
acceleration slowly increases from 0 m/s2 to 9.8 m/s2. Then the gravity
load would be a constant value throughout the process. Thus the stable
state of the soil–pile-structure model under gravity can be obtained.
Second, the stresses calculated by the first step are used as the
initial state for the second stage analysis and a gravity acceleration of
9.8 m/s2 is applied in the beginning. Once the displacement of the
model reaches a constant value (a static-like condition) and the
transient response of the system disappears, the seismic excitations
are then added and applied to the base rock of the model.
5. Results and discussion
5.1. Effect of nonlinearity of soil on SSPSI response
Comparisons of the 3D numerical predictions between the
equivalent linear soil model and the nonlinear soil model for the
151
ð11Þ maximum lateral displacements of the structure and the pile are
described in Fig. 9(a) and (b), respectively. In this case, the height at
the top of the piles is set as zero. It should be noted that the max-
imum lateral displacement of each observation point is determined
when the maximum deflection at the top of the structure occurred,
that is, t¼7.08 s for equivalent linear soil and t¼7.02 s for nonlinear
soil. This method would be more appropriate for reflecting the
structural and pile’s deformations in comparison with the approach
in which the maximum lateral displacements are given when the
peak values in the time history curves of displacement are reached
[46]. Fig. 10 shows the comparison results of the two soil models for
the time–displacement curves of the structure and the pile. As is
shown in Fig. 8, point P1 is at the bottom end of the pile and point P2
is at the top end of the pile; point S1 is in the middle of the structure,
and point S2 is at the top of the structure.
The trend and the values based on the nonlinear soil model are in
good agreement with the results obtained from the equivalent linear
soil model. However, it can be noticed that the maximum displace-
ments of the nonlinear soil model tend to be 0.8–4.2% smaller than
those of the equivalent linear soil model. The equivalent linear
method would sometimes leads to larger damping and smaller
modulus at high frequencies under ground shaking, which results in
underestimation of the stiffness of the soil layers [22]. Consequently,
the maximum displacements of the structure and the pile based on
the equivalent soil model are overestimated under the earthquake.
The comparison of acceleration records based on the two dif-
ferent soil models is presented in Fig. 11. It can be seen that,
compared with the results obtained from the equivalent linear soil
model, the peek acceleration based on the nonlinear soil model
increases by 3–10% in the pile response and 10–16% in the struc-
ture response. This indicates that soil nonlinearity has a great
effect on the structural acceleration response and the equivalent
linear soil model presented in the analysis results in an under-
estimation of the peak acceleration under the ground shaking. This
is also due to that the equivalent linear method computes the
152 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156

Fig. 11. Time-history acceleration records resting on model with equivalent linear soil and nonlinear soil at different points.

effective strain as a constant fraction of the maximum strain and it
leads to an underestimation of the equivalent stiffness of the soil.
The equivalent linear soil model tends to be conservative in the
structural acceleration response estimation under this seismic
excitation. Therefore, in the design process of the SSPSI system,
soil behavior should be considered as a nonlinear constitutive
model, which is taken for granted in the following analyses.
5.2. Effect of nonlinearity of soil–pile interface on SSPSI response
The effect of nonlinearity of soil–pile–structure interface on the
acceleration response of structure was investigated [19]. It con-
cluded that the nonlinearity between the soil and the piles has a
big effect on the structural response of the SSPSI system. However,
the specific effect of the nonlinear interface was not analyzed.
Therefore, in this paper, the effect of nonlinearity of the interface is
fully analyzed and the explanation of this effect is also presented.
Fig. 12 shows the comparison results of time history accelera-
tions of the pile and the structure based on the models with dif-
ferent soil–pile interactions, one considering the nonlinearity of
soil–pile interface and the other one assuming that the piles are
perfectly bounded with adjacent soil and the slippage and
separation of the soil and the piles will not be taken into con-
sideration. Similar observations of the acceleration response of the
pile and the structure can be obtained in the two models. It can be
seen in Table 4 that when the nonlinearity of soil–pile interface is
considered, the peek acceleration decreases by 1–5% in the pile
response and 6–12% in the structure response compared with the
results excluding the effect of nonlinear interaction between the
soil and the piles. This can be due to that the soil–pile–structure
 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156 153

Fig. 12. Comparison of acceleration response of pile and structure considering nonlinear soil–pile interface and not considering nonlinear soil–pile interface.

Table 4 developed on either sides of the pile, the contact pressure from
Peak acceleration of pile and structure with different soil–pile interactions and soil at the pile head is lost and becomes zero.
plastic flow rules for soil The peak acceleration at the top of the structure decreases
Point Associative flow rule Non-associative flow rule
more than 10% because of the contact nonlinearity, indicating that
the nonlinearity of soil–pile interface has a great effect on the
Contact interface acc Share nodes acc Contact interface acc (g) dynamic response of the system and is more suitable for simu-
(g) (g) lating the real interactions between the soil and the piles.
P1 0.1926 0.1947 0.1915
P2 0.2714 0.2845 0.2693 5.3. Sensitivity of SSPSI response to soil dilation
S1 0.3227 0.3498 0.3188
S2 0.4407 0.4936 0.4315 The effect of the soil's dilation angle on the dynamic response
of the system is assessed by measuring the peak acceleration of
the pile and the structure for varying dilation angle values ψ , as is
system would be more rigid if there was no slippage and gapping shown in Fig. 14. The result shows that the system is not sensitive
at the pile soil interface. to the dilation angle. The peak accelerations of the pile and the
Experiences from past earthquake observations clearly shows structure with the soil constitutive model adopting the non-
that when a soil–pile–structure system is subjected to seismic associative flow rule (ψ ¼ φ=2) are slightly smaller than the
excitations, the soil around the pile groups may be compressed results obtained following the associative flow rule (ψ ¼ φ).
laterally to the extent that a soil pile gap separation may occur. Table 4 shows that the difference of peak acceleration is 0.5–0.8%
These gap separations between soil and pile have been observed in in the pile response and 1.2–2.1% in the structure response because
the past both in the field and laboratory tests. In 1989 Loma Prieta of the varied dilation angles of the soil. Therefore, the effect of the
soil’s dilation angle can be ignored in the dynamic response ana-
earthquake, the soil pile gap developed along the Struve Slough
lysis of the SSPSI system under the seismic excitation. This is in
crossing [10]. The phenomenon of closing and separation occur
agreement with the analysis of sensitivity to soil’s dilation angle
between the soil and pile groups [19].
using the ABAQUS program [32].
Fig. 13 shows the time history contact pressure of elements
between the pile and its surrounding soil at the points of P1 and 5.4. Pile foundation's effect on SSPSI response
P2. It can be clearly observed that the contact pressure at the top
of the pile does not always exist, suggesting that the nonlinearity In order to determine the effect of the pile foundations on the
of soil–pile interface would lead to the separation and closing of response of the soil, the distribution of maximum lateral dis-
the soil and the pile foundation. As the gap on the interface is placements of the soil based on the model with pile foundations
154 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156
Fig. 13. Contact pressure versus time history of the elements at points P1 and P2 on the soil–pile interface.
Fig. 14. Comparison of acceleration response of pile and structure in model with
soil dilation angle ψ ¼ φ=2 and ψ ¼ φ.
and the model without pile foundations (Fig. 8) are presented in
Fig. 15. Likewise, the maximum lateral displacement of each
observation point is determined when the maximum deflection at
the top of the structure occurred, that is, t ¼7.07 s for model
without pile foundations and t¼7.02 s for the SSPSI model.
Similar distributions of the deflection of soil can be observed in
the models with and without piles. It can be clearly seen that the
maximum lateral displacement of the soil decreases because of the
pile foundations. The pile is much stiffer than the soil, which
increases the stiffness of the whole system and leads to decreased
displacement response of soil and structure. Furthermore, the
presence of the pile foundations will restrict the rocking of the
superstructure and this is clearly described in the displacement
contours at the time t¼7 s in Fig. 16, in which the scale factor of
the deformation is 500. Therefore, the displacement response of
the structure will also be undermined.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, three dimensional finite element analyses of the
SSPSI system based on equivalent linear soil model and nonlinear
soil model have been carried out. The effects of the nonlinearity of
soil–pile interface and soil dilation angle on the dynamic response
of the system are assessed in detail. Furthermore, the effects of
Fig. 15. Distribution of the displacement amplitude of soil based on model with
pile foundations and model without pile foundations.
pile foundations on the dynamic behavior of the system are also
discussed in this paper. Important conclusions drawn from the
analyses in the paper are as follows:
1. The ground response results obtained from the 3D finite ele-
ment analysis with the equivalent linear soil model are in good
agreement with the 1D equivalent linear analysis results.
2. Seismic soil–pile–structure interaction can be greatly affected
by the soil nonlinearity and the traditional equivalent linear soil
model underestimates the structural acceleration response
under the seismic excitation. In the design process of the SSPSI
system subjected to the earthquake, the soil behavior should be
considered as a nonlinear constitutive model.
3. Obvious separation and closing of the soil and the piles can be
observed. The nonlinearity of the soil–pile interface has a great
effect on the dynamic response of the system and is more sui-
table for simulating the real interactions between the soil and
the piles. The SSPSI system is not sensitive to the variation of
soil’s dilation angle under the seismic excitation.
4. The presence of pile foundations can suppress the rocking of the
structure and it will lead to decreased displacement response of
 C. Luo et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 84 (2016) 145–156
Fig. 16. Contours of displacements of the middle structure in X direction: (a) model without pile foundations; (b) model with pile foundations (m).
soil and structure during the interaction between the soil and
the piles.
Further research will be conducted to deal with seismic exci-
tations with different amplitudes and directions. The results pre-
sented in this paper provide a global understanding of this SSPSI
system under seismic loading and offer useful data and references
for the seismic design of the SSPSI system in the future.
Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from
the National 863 High Technology Research and Development
Program of China (2012AA01A307) and the National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China (51475287). We would also like to thank
the State Key Laboratory Mechanical System and Vibration
(Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and the Shanghai Nuclear Engi-
neering Research and Design Institute.
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