Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

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Structures
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Three-dimensional numerical analysis on seismic behavior of soil-piled raft- T

structure system
Chaidul Haque Chaudhuria, Diptesh Chandaa, Rajib Sahaa, , Sumanta Haldarb
⁎

a
National Institute of Technology Agartala, Jirania 799046, Tripura(w), India
b
School of Infrastructure, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar 751013, Odisha, India

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Increasing demand for high-rise buildings and other important structures in urban areas and unfavorable land
Piled raft foundation has resulted to opt for piled raft foundation by the designers. The present study is an attempt to investigate the
Pile length asymmetry seismic behavior of piled raft foundation supporting structural system embedded in very soft clay encompassing
Soil structure interaction variations of different influential parameters. The piled raft system is modeled using three-dimensional (3D)
Finite element analysis
finite element analysis. At first, the 3D numerical model is validated with past numerical studies. This is followed
Seismic behavior
by a detailed parametric study on the effect of different influential parameters, such as flexibility of raft, pile
spacing to diameter ratios, and asymmetry in pile length on dynamic characteristics and seismic response of the
piled raft foundation system considering dynamic soil-structure interaction (DSSI). It is observed that the fun­
damental period of the structure gets significantly lengthened with increasing raft flexibility whereas pile head
shear considerably reduced. Further, non-identical pile lengths attributing asymmetric group configuration re­
sults in a significant change in the fundamental period of the structure and pile head shear.

1. Introduction
Piled raft foundations are generally used in soft to medium soil to
support high rise buildings and other important structures such as nu­
clear power plants, towers, skyscrapers, liquid storage tanks, etc. A
conventional design approach considers gravity loading to design the
piles under the raft as a settlement reducer while the raft is designed to
provide reasonable stiffness and soil resistance e.g. [9,26]. On the other
hand, the seismic design of structures supported on the piled raft foun­
dation is traditionally carried out considering a fixed base condition (i.e.
fixity at the base level of the superstructure) and neglecting the effect of
soil-structure interaction (SSI). The reason behind ignoring the effect of
SSI is due to the complexity in the modeling of the system and also due to
the unavailability of standardized and validated analysis techniques
[23,4]. This simplified assumption of neglecting SSI is however valid for
a certain class of structures and soil conditions, such as light structures in
relatively firm soil [2]. But the effect of SSI becomes prominent in case of
heavy structure resting on relatively soft soils and neglecting of SSI for
such cases may lead to an unsafe design for both superstructure and
foundation as revealed in many case studies (e.g. 1985 Mexico city
earthquake, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, 1995 Kobe earthquake). In a
realistic situation, deformable characteristics of soil attribute partial
fixity at the foundation level, which alters the period and thereby the
response of the structure. Further, the heavy mass of raft in the piled raft
foundation may induce additional inertial forces into the system and also
change the natural period of the whole structure [41]. All these factors
make soil-structure interaction (SSI) to be a vital parameter for con­
sideration in seismic analyses of structures. The present study, therefore,
takes a step towards a more realistic analysis by incorporating the effects
of SSI to examine the seismic response of structure supported on piled
raft foundation embedded in soft clay.
State of art research indicates that seismic behavior of piled raft
foundation supporting structural system has been reported elsewhere by
a group of researchers [31,4,18,46,3,5,41–44,27,48,49,22,6,45,10,39].
Banerjee [4] has carried out both experimental and numerical in­
vestigations to investigate the seismic response of pile-raft systems in
normally consolidated kaolin clay due to far-field earthquake motions.
This work is extended by Zhang [47] to understand the behavior of the
same when subjected to a series of short and long duration small,
medium, and large-amplitude earthquakes, respectively. In both the
studies it is observed that the acceleration response at the clay surface
and raft top is amplified significantly as compared to the input base
motion. Further, Kumar et al. [27] performed a response spectrum
analysis on the piled raft foundation and presented the design response of

Corresponding author.
⁎

E-mail addresses: chaudhuri.ch@iitb.ac.in (C.H. Chaudhuri), diptesh279@gmail.com (D. Chanda), rajib.iitbbsr@gmail.com (R. Saha),
sumanta@iitbbs.ac.in (S. Haldar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2020.09.024
Received 25 May 2020; Received in revised form 12 August 2020; Accepted 10 September 2020
2352-0124/ © 2020 Institution of Structural Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
C.H. Chaudhuri, et al.
the foundation. In another study, Yamashita et al. [46] performed the
seismic analysis of 12-storey base-isolated building on the piled raft
foundation embedded in soft ground in Tokoyo. It was found that the
horizontal accelerations of the superstructure were reduced to approxi­
mately 30% of those of the ground due to kinematic soil–foundation
interaction in addition to the base isolation system. Apart from these, the
effect of the superstructure on the natural frequency of piled raft is also
reported in several other studies [38,6,41–44]. From these studies, it is
clear that the behavior of a structure supported on a piled raft foundation
during an earthquake is considered a fairly complex problem due to
dynamic interaction among soil, raft, pile, and structure. However, in
order to develop a better understanding in this direction, a complete 3-D
finite element model of soil-piled raft and superstructure system can
provide a better insight into the effect of SSI on the seismic response of
the piled raft-superstructure system.
Moreover, these past studies on seismic response of piled raft have
not highlighted the influence of various influential design parameters
such as raft-soil relative stiffness, length, and spacing to diameter ratio
of the pile, the number of piles in a group, and pile head connection
with the raft on the behavior of piled raft. These design parameters
have been outlined as controlling factors in the design of piled raft
foundation by many researchers (e.g., [24,33,14,15,25,34,32,7,11]).
On the other hand, the conventional design of piles in a piled raft often
involves uniform piles with the same diameter and pile length, located
on a regular grid pattern with constant spacing between the piles. This
is partly to facilitate convenient construction and to minimize the risk
of errors during fabrication and installation processes [29,28]. Re­
searchers have investigated the effect of length asymmetry on the be­
havior of piled raft under vertical loading, however, the effect of length
asymmetry on seismic response of piled raft is still untouched.
In this context, the present study is an attempt to understand the
seismic behavior of piled raft foundation incorporating the complex
seismic soil-piled raft foundation-structure interaction encompassing
different parametric variations of influential design parameters. 3D finite
element based numerical modeling is adopted to carry out the dynamic
analysis. Abaqus CAE [1] is used to model the soil-piled raft-structure
system. First, a verification study is performed to assess the sanctity of
the numerical model of piled raft foundation. Seismic behavior of piled
raft supported structural system is investigated by calculating the fun­
damental period of the whole structural system and dynamic response at
superstructure and pile elements under seismic loadings. The dynamic
characteristics and response of the whole system are calculated per­
taining to variation in different influential factors, such as raft-soil re­
lative stiffness, pile length asymmetry, spacing to diameter (S/d) ratio,
and natural period of the superstructure. In addition, a comparative
study on the estimation of the fundamental period of structure supported
on different piled raft foundation system is performed based on present
numerical analysis and analytical solutions reported elsewhere [21]. Fi­
nally, the outcome of the present study helps to develop insight into the
problem and offers some seismic design inputs for structures supported
on the piled raft foundation system in soft clay.
2. Numerical modeling of the soil-piled raft-structure system
2.1. Modeling of the superstructure
The present analysis considers four representative natural periods of
structures in fixed base conditions, namely, 0.30 s, 0.60 s, 1.0 s, and
2.0 s to represent short, medium, and long-period structures respec­
tively. Realistically, 0.30 s, 0.60 s, 1.0 s, and 2.0 s fundamental period
of structure approximately exhibits three-storied, six-storied, ten-
storied, and twenty-storied buildings, respectively. The behavior of
these multi-degrees of freedom systems is attempted to be studied
through equivalent single degree freedom (SDOF) lumped mass stick
model system in a simplistic manner. The fundamental periods of the
SDOF system are obtained by calibrating the mass and stiffness of the
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Structures 28 (2020) 905–922
lumped mass system. Mass of superstructure is calculated based on the
assumed bay size of the superstructure having a dimension of
8.5 m × 8.5 m with 3.5 m storey height and imposed gravity loading of
8.0 kN/m2 with a realistic consideration of live load plus dead load.
Thus, the mass of the superstructure calculated to be in the order of
173,400 kg, 346,800 kg, 578,000 kg, and 1156000 kg for 0.30 s, 0.60 s,
1.0 s, and 2.0 s, respectively. A linear elastic one dimensional (1D)
Timoshenko beam (shear-flexible) element having a height of 3.0 m is
used to model the stick element and the required stiffness of lumped
mass is maintained by assigning proper sectional properties.
2.2. Modeling of soil-piled raft foundation
The raft is modeled using an eight-noded hexahedral solid element.
All the nodes of the raft have three translational degrees of freedom i.e.,
along X, Y, and Z directions. Further, piles are modeled using a two-
noded linear beam element as used in the superstructure stick model
having six degrees of freedom (three translational and three rotational)
at each node of the elements. Pile element is connected to raft nodes by
creating embedded region constraints. Both pile and raft are modeled as
linear elastic material in this study. Fig. 1 presents a 3D model of the
soil-piled raft-structural system.
Soil is also modeled using an eight-noded hexahedral element. A
conventional Mohr-Coulomb elastic-perfectly plastic constitutive model
is employed to model soft clay in this study. In fact, the Mohr-Coulomb
model is used in past studies to simulate the behavior of soil under
seismic excitation [36,27,40,12]. Although several advanced soil plasti­
city models are available but the use of such advanced models may create
complexity in dynamic analysis. Further, it is expensive to extract addi­
tional parameters from lab tests for implementing such advanced con­
stitutive model. Hence, the Mohr-Coulomb model is used herein con­
sidering a balance between the rigor of analysis, expensiveness, and
accuracy. Apart from this, soft clay is idealized to have linearly in­
creasing undrained shear strength along with the depth. Linearly in­
creasing strength is modeled following the proposed design methodology
suggested elsewhere [20]. The undrained shear strength and modulus of
elasticity of soil are assumed as 9.8 kN/m2 and 1500 kN/m2 respectively
at one diameter depth below EGL which are considered to be linearly
increasing with depth. Frictional and dilation angles are considered as
zero. The soil is discretized in different sizes of elements for near-site and
far-site soil to enhance computational efficiency and avoid any numerical
distortion [13]. Soil below the raft is discretized in 0.5 m × 0.5 m ele­
ment size and the remaining part of the soil is discretized in
2.5 m × 0.5 m and 2.5 m × 2.5 m sizes as shown in Fig. 1, whereas in
the vertical direction the size of the element is kept as 2.5 m. A con­
vergence analysis is performed for the selection of finer mesh sizes.
Further, mesh quality test which is an in-built option in Abaqus CAE [1]
onfirms the accuracy of the selection of mesh size. The surface to surface
contact method is used to model the soil-raft interface. The normal be­
havior of contact is assumed as hard contact and in tangential behavior, a
value of the coefficient of friction of 0.7 [35] is assumed. Raft surface is
assumed as a master surface and raft surrounding soil surface is assumed
as the slave surface. Further, the interaction with soil at the pile shaft and
toe is described using embedded interface elements an in-built option in
Abaqus CAE [1]. Table 1 presents the detailed material properties of the
soil-piled raft superstructure system used in the present study.
3. Damping
Damping of the whole system is considered as 5% [37]. Damping is
provided using the Rayleigh damping option in Abaqus. Damping coeffi­
cients are calculated based on the fundamental frequency of the soil-piled
raft-structure system and assuming a 5% critical damping coefficient for
the whole system. Free vibration analysis is performed in Abaqus to obtain
the fundamental frequency of structure supported by the piled raft foun­
dation embedded in soft clay. Free vibration is simulated in Abaqus by
C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 1. Finite element model of the soil-piled raft-structure system.

providing an initial displacement at the top of the superstructure. Further,
an infinite element boundary condition is used to avoid reflection of di­
latational and shear wave energy back into the model.
4. Ground motions
The present study considers three different types of ground motions
for dynamic analysis. Sinusoidal wave having 0.18 Hz frequency and
swept-sine motion having a frequency ranging from 0.25 Hz to 8 Hz
with a peak acceleration of 1.0 m/s2 is considered. Further, a recorded
motion of the 1995 Kobe earthquake [magnitude (Mw) = 6.9] having
PGA of 0.3447 g is also used in this study. The epicenter (34.59° N and
135.07° E) was located north end of Awaji island approximately 20 km
away from the center of the city of Kobe. Fig. 2 presents the accelera­
tion time history of the three different input motions considered in the
present study. Further, the frequency domain signal of the real-time
Kobe motion is presented in Fig. 3. It is observed from the frequency
domain signal that the predominant frequency in the real-time Kobe
earthquake motion lies within a range between 0.1 Hz and 1 Hz.
5. Parametric cases
This section presents the different parametric cases considered in this
present study. The parametric cases are decided based on the design of
piled raft foundation under gravity loading for the four representative
superstructures with fundamental periods, of 0.30 s, 0.60 s, 1.0 s, and
2.0 s, respectively as discussed in the previous section 2.1. At first, a raft
size of 10 m × 10 m × 1 m (thick) is assumed based on the bay area of
these superstructures i.e. 8.5 m × 8.5 m. The raft exhibits an adequate
factor of safety (FOS > 3) with respect to shear failure criteria con­
sidering imposed vertical loading. However, the settlement of the raft for
the four representative cases is found to be higher than the allowable
limit of 100 mm for clay as suggested in Bowels [8]. In order to reduce
the settlement within the allowable limit, the piled raft foundation is
designed following Poulos [34]. Pile rafts are designed within the con­
servative side maintaining a FOS of 5.0. Further, the load settlement
curve is obtained from 3D numerical analysis in Abaqus CAE [1], which
indicates that the total settlement of piled raft under imposed load from
the representative superstructures is within the permissible limit. Steel
material having Young’s modulus (Esteel) = 180 × 106 kN/m2 and mass
density( ) = 8000 kg/m3 is considered to model the piled raft supported
structural system. Circular solid pile having a length (L) = 20 m, dia­
meter (d) = 0.5 m and pile spacing to diameter ratios (S/d) = 3 are
assumed herein. The raft is considered fully embedded in soil and the
total depth of the soil layer is assumed as 25 m. Table 2 presents the
detailed configurations of the design pile groups obtained for the dif­
ferent representative cases of superstructures used in the present study.
After deciding the design pile group for the various representative
cases, the effect of variation of pile spacing, raft flexibility, and pile
length asymmetry on seismic response of piled raft is also studied herein.
Two different raft-soil relative stiffness (krs), in the order of 1.27 and
47.01 attributing raft thickness (tr ) of 0.3 m and 1.0 m respectively are
considered to incorporate flexible to rigid behavior of raft under seismic
loading. Relative stiffness of the raft is modeled by following proposed
methodology by Clancy and Randolph [15]. Further, the effect of var­
iation of pile spacing to diameter ratios (S/d) is studied by considering

Table1
Properties of the raft, pile, superstructure, and soil considered in the present study.
Parameters Units Raft Pile Superstructure Soil

Material/Type N/A Steel Steel Steel Very soft clay

Length, L m 10 20 N/A 45
Width, B m 10 N/A N/A 45
Depth, Z m 1 N/A 3 25
Diameter, d m N/A 0.5 #* N/A
Young’s modulus, E kN/m2 180 × 106 180 × 106 180 × 106 1500 (at ‘d’ depth)
Unit weight, λ kN/m3 78.5 78.5 78.5 13.5
Poisson’s Ratio, υ N/A 0.30 0.30 0.30 0.40
Frictional Angle, ø Degree N/A N/A N/A 0
Cohesion, c kN/m2 N/A N/A N/A 9.8 (at ‘d’ depth)

#* indicates that the diameter of the lumped stick is alterable to fix the targeted fixed based fundamental period of structure.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al.
Fig. 2. Input ground motions of (a) Sinusoidal wave having 0.18 Hz frequency, (b) Swept-sine wave having frequency range 0.25–8.0 Hz, and (c) 1995 Kobe
earthquake motion having 0.3447 g PGA used in the present study.
Fig. 3. Frequency-domain signal of real-time 1995 Kobe earthquake motion.
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Structures 28 (2020) 905–922
two different S/d ratios in the order of 3 and 10 respectively. This is
performed only for the two feasible cases of piled raft foundation sup­
porting superstructure having a fixed base period of 0.30 s and 0.60 s
respectively. Finally, asymmetric pile group configurations are generated
to simulate the optimum piled raft foundation by considering varying
length of piles (5 m and 20 m) within the pile group. The present study
considers only pile length asymmetric configuration which is recognized
as an optimum piled raft configuration as suggested elsewhere [29,28].
Design of asymmetric pile length supported raft and structure is re­
checked which is found to be safe with respect to settlement criteria. A
detailed description of all the parametric variation cases considered in
the present study is presented in Table 2.
6. Analysis methodology
At first, numerical analysis of 3D soil-piled raft-structure system is
performed using finite element based software Abaqus CAE [1] under
static vertical loading for the design of piled raft for the different re­
presentative cases of the superstructures as discussed in previous sec­
tions. Further, the seismic behavior of piled raft supported structural
system is investigated by obtaining the fundamental lateral period and
C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Table 2
Summary of case studies.
Soil Condition Period of Raft Raft-soil relative S/d L/d Pile behavior Pile Configuration Design Pile Remarks
structure at thickness stiffness group
fixed base (m) (krs)
condition
(Tfixed) (s)

Very soft clay 0.3 1.0 47.01(rigid) 3 40 Flexible Symmetric *NPR *NPR = No Piles Required.
ɣsat = 13.5 kN/ 10 (Adopted
m3 [8] 0.3 1.27(flexible) 3 1 × 2) **Asymmetry introduced by
10 incorporating piles of non-
0.6 1.0 47.01(rigid) 3 40 Flexible Symmetric 2×2 identical length as presented in
10 Table 5.
0.3 1.27(flexible) 3 40 Flexible
10 40 Flexible Asymmetric**
10 Stiff
1.0 1.0 3 40 Flexible Symmetric 3×3
47.01(rigid) 40 Flexible Asymmetric
10 Stiff
0.3 40 Flexible Symmetric
1.27(flexible) 40 Flexible Asymmetric
10 Stiff
2.0 1.0 47.01(rigid) 3 40 Flexible Symmetric 5×5
40 Flexible Asymmetric
10 Stiff
0.3 1.27(flexible) 40 Flexible Symmetric
40 Flexible Asymmetric
10 Stiff

dynamic response of the whole structural system under seismic load­
ings. Fundamental period of lumped mass stick model of the super­
structure in fixed base condition (Tfixed) and SSI condition (Tssi) are
calculated using dynamic implicit method to simulate the free vibration
analysis. The Newtown-Raphson iteration algorithm is used to achieve
convergence.
7. Results and discussion
7.1. Validation of the proposed numerical model
The numerical model of piled raft foundation developed in Abaqus
CAE [1] is validated with numerical studies published elsewhere
[27,22] to verify the sanctity of developed model under dynamic
loading. The parameters pertaining to soil, pile, raft, and superstructure
for these studies are presented in Table 3.
At first, the numerical study by Kumar et al. [27] on the behavior of
the combined piled raft foundation under earthquake loading is con­
sidered to validate the present numerical model under dynamic
loading. Piled raft is considered to be embedded in Toyoura Sand and
Mohr-Coulomb constitutive model was adopted by Kumar et al. [27] to
model the soil. The validation is performed for the considered input
sinusoidal acceleration applied at the base of the soil model with an
amplitude of 1 m/s2 and frequency of 1 Hz. Fig. 4(a) and (b) present the
input and output acceleration-time response at the soil base and top of
piled raft foundation respectively. The maximum acceleration response
observed at top of piled raft is found to be 2.65 m/s2 in the present
analysis which is in good agreement with the result reported in Kumar
et al. [27] showing a marginal variation in the order of 5.4%.
Further, another numerical study by Goh and Zhang [22] on piled
raft in soft clay is also used for validation of the present numerical model.
In that study, the authors have focused on the estimation of peak ac­
celeration of piled raft in soft clay when subjected to far-field seismic
excitation. Soft clay is modeled using an advanced hyperbolic-hysteresis
constitutive model in their study. However, the present numerical study
has modeled the soft clay using the conventional Mohr-Coulomb con­
stitutive model. The objective of this validation is to check the efficacy of
the Mohr-Coulomb model in understanding the seismic response of piled
raft in soft clay in a reasonably accurate manner as compared to the
dynamic constitutive behavior of the soil. The validation is performed for
the case of 4 × 3 piled raft subjected to a combined vertical load of 597-
ton at raft surface and a short duration medium intensity earthquake
having PGA = 0.06 g acting at soil base as reported in their study.
Fig. 5(a) and (b) present the input and output acceleration time history of
short duration medium intensity earthquake at soil base and top of the
piled raft model respectively. Interestingly, it is observed that the output
acceleration recorded at the top of the piled raft in present numerical
analysis shows a subdued response of 0.13 g (i.e. 13% variation) as
compared to the results reported by Goh and Zhang [22]. The reason for
this minor variation may be due to the fact of not considering the effect
of modulus degradation curve of soil under dynamic loading. However,
since the variation is marginal in both the cases of validation and due to
simplicity in modeling, the present numerical model may be considered
reliable and is used for the further numerical study.
7.2. Fundamental period of structure supported on symmetric piled raft
foundation embedded in soft clay
The fundamental natural period of the soil-piled raft-structural
system (Tssi) considering SSI is obtained for all cases of symmetric pile
group supported superstructures. Period obtained from free vibration
test in Abaqus considering both fixed base and SSI conditions are pre­
sented herein. At first, the numerically obtained Tssi results are com­
pared with the results calculated using well-accepted empirical solu­
tions proposed by Gazetas [21]. Table 4 presents the comparison
between Tssi obtained from the 3D numerical model and closed-form
empirical expression suggested by Gazetas [21]. This is understood that
this empirical expression has a limitation that it does not take into
account the effect of the raft for estimating the SSI period (Tssi) of the
system. However, it is felt that the rotational stiffness of a rigidly
capped pile group is mainly controlled by the axial stiffness of the piles
while the stiffness of the raft in lateral mode may be considered less
important. The closed-form expression for calculating Tssi for the pile-
supported structure proposed by Gazetas [21] is presented herein.
2
kstr k H kstr Hstr
Tssi = Tfixed 1 + + str str +
Kxx Kxr Krr (1)

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Table 3
Properties of superstructure, raft, pile, and soil used for validation of the present numerical model.
Literature Kumar et al. [27] Goh and Zhang [22]

Parameters Units Soil Raft Pile Soil Raft Pile

Material/Type N/A Toyoura Sand Aluminum Concrete Kaolin clay Sand Aluminum Aluminum
Length, L m 28 4 9 28.5 28.5 12.5 14
Width, B m 28 4 N/A 25 25 8.25 N/A
Depth, Z m 16 1 N/A 15.5 0.5 1.2 N/A
Outer Diameter, d m N/A N/A 0.5 N/A N/A N/A 1
Inner Diameter, dʹ m N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Young’s modulus, E kN/m2 40,000 70 × 106 41.7 × 106 4000 43,000 70 × 106 70 × 106
Unit weight, λ kN/m3 16.3 27.0 24 16.1 17 27.0 27.0
Poisson’s ratio,υ N/A 0.3 0.35 0.2 0.30 0.3 0.35 0.35
Frictional Angle, ø Degree 310 N/A N/A 250 350 N/A N/A
Dilatancy Angle, φ Degree 10 N/A N/A 0.10 50 N/A N/A
Cohesion, c kN/m2 10 N/A N/A 1.43 (at ‘d’ depth) 1 N/A N/A

where Tssi, Tfixed, kstr, and Hstr denote the natural period considering SSI,
the natural period under fixed base condition, stiffness of the structure,
and height of structure respectively. Kxx, Kxr, and Krr denote dynamic
stiffness of foundation in sway, coupled sway-rocking, and rocking
motion respectively. In this study, Hstr is kept constant as 3.0 m. Lateral
stiffness of the structure is calculated using the following equation.
3 × Esteel × Isteel
kstr = 3
Hstr
where Esteel = Young’s modulus of structure (180 × 106 kN/m2) and
Isteel = Moment of inertia that varies with the cross-section of circular
lumped mass stick model. Dynamic group-soil stiffness Kxx, Kxr, and Krr
are obtained by multiplying single pile static stiffness by the number of
piles in a group and the dynamic interaction factor. Static stiffness of
single pile and dynamic interaction factors are obtained using empirical
and analytical solutions following the literature proposed by Gazetas
[19] and Makris and Gazetas [30]. For the sake of brevity, the detailed
calculations are not shown here. However, this can be reflected from
work by the authors published elsewhere [17,43]. As suggested by
Markis and Gazetas [30], pile-soil group stiffness is a function of di­
mensionless frequency a0 (a0 = ωd/Vs, where ω = angular frequency of
harmonic motion and d is the pile diameter, Vs = shear wave velocity in
the soil layer). Three different dimensionless frequencies of 0.05, 0.3,
and 1.0 are chosen for computation of Tssi from empirical expression.
It is observed that fundamental periods get lengthened due to the
incorporation of SSI and the percentage of lengthening of the period is
relatively higher in the case of short-period structures as compared to
long-period structures. For instance, the maximum lengthening from
the 3D numerical analysis is found in cases of Tfixed = 0.30 s, 0.60 s,
1.0 s., and 2.0 s in order of 166.67%, 66.67%, 50%, and 5% respec­
tively. On the other hand, the analytical Tssi values exhibit a close
prediction of numerical results. It is observed that variation is found in
the range of 0 to 23.97% which shows an acceptable agreement of re­
(2) sults and further reconfirms the accuracy of the numerical model used
in the present study.
7.2.1. Effect of asymmetric pile length configuration on fundamental period
of the structure
Table 5 presents the percentage lengthening of Tssi for different
periods of structure supported on different pile groups with asymmetric
and symmetric pile length configuration. Percentage lengthening of the
period due to the effect of asymmetric pile length configuration is in­
vestigated for S/d = 3 and 10 and raft-soil relative stiffness (krs) of 1.27
and 47.01 in order to have a generic conclusion. It is observed that
asymmetry in pile length in general effects lengthening of Tssi compared
to symmetric counterpart. The influence is found to be significantly
higher in the case of moderately stiff period of the superstructure
whereas the effect of asymmetry gets subdued for longer period of the
superstructure. For instance, in the case of Tfixed = 0.60 s, lengthening
of period occurs in the order 67% to 133% with the change in pile

Fig. 4. (a) Input and (b) output acceleration time history of sinusoidal motion at soil base and top of the piled raft model respectively.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 5. (a) Input and (b) output acceleration time history of small duration medium intensity earthquake motion at soil base and top of the piled raft model
respectively.

length configuration from symmetric to asymmetric. Moreover, in the
case of Tfixed = 1.0 s, lengthening of the period varies from 50% to 62%
and 62% to 80% for krs = 47.01 and 1.27 respectively, when pile length
configuration changes from symmetric to asymmetric. Further, it is also
noted that the effect of asymmetry may vary with change in raft flex­
ibility as observed in the case of Tfixed = 1.0 s. However, the effect is
also studied for Tfixed = 2.0 s which shows a similar trend with an
increase of 20% due to asymmetry in pile length compared to sym­
metric counterpart. The reason behind the further increase of funda­
mental period in asymmetric pile length configuration compared to the
symmetric pile length configuration may be due to two primary rea­
sons. First, asymmetry in pile length may lead to change in lateral
stiffness of pile group which may cause a change in the lateral period of
the whole structure, and secondly pure torsional or coupled lateral-
torsional mode of vibration may govern the first mode of vibration due
to asymmetric pile group configuration.
However, it is observed that the fundamental period calculated from
free vibration analysis needs less rigor in Abaqus CAE [1] 3D model of
soil-piled raft-structure system, whereas, identification of mode shapes
of the structural system is cumbersome. Hence, another study is carried
out in SAPv20 [16] to investigate the modal behavior of soil-piled raft-
structure systems considering both symmetric and asymmetric pile
length configuration which may help to understand the issue more
clearly. Fig. 6 presents the soil-piled raft-structure system developed in
SAP v20 [16]. Beams on Winkler Foundation (BWF) model is used in
SAP v20 [16] to predict the modal frequencies of symmetric and
asymmetric piled raft supported structural systems embedded in soft
clay. Soil is idealized as linear independent springs connected to dis­
cretized pile nodes. Stiffness of soil springs is calculated following a
study published elsewhere [41]. One dimensional elastic beam-column
element is used to model the piles. The raft is modeled using a plate
element. Both plate and beam are discretized in small elements having
the size of each element of 0.5 m and each joint having six degrees of
freedom [16]. A sample case of 5 × 5 pile group having Tfixed = 2.0 s
for krs = 1.27 and 47.01 is modeled in SAP v20 [16] for modal fre­
quency analysis and presented in Table 6. For the sake of brevity, the
detailed modeling is not presented herein. It is observed that periods
obtained from SAP v20 [16] analysis are in a close agreement with 3D
FEM results in Abaqus CAE [1]. After investigating the fundamental
mode shapes in SAP v20 [16], it is found that the torsional mode is not
active in the fundamental mode of the structure. Hence, it is confirmed
that the decrease in lateral stiffness of the whole system due to pile
length asymmetry is the reason for further lengthening of the period.
7.2.2. Effect of S/D ratio on period of the structure
The effect of S/d ratio on fundamental period of the structure is
studied in the present study and presented in Fig. 7(a)-(b) in terms of
percentage lengthening of Tssi with respect to S/d ratio for krs = 47.01
and 1.27 respectively. Variation of S/d ratio in the order of 3 and 10 is
considered for both 0.3 s and 0.6 s fixed base period structural systems
respectively. Further, the symmetric pile length configuration is con­
sidered herein. It is observed from Fig. 7(a)-(b) that for Tfixed = 0.3 s,
there is marginal effect of S/d on change of period lengthening irre­
spective of any value of krs (i.e. 1.27 and 47.01). This may be due to the
fact that change of S/d ratio from 3 to 10 has a marginal effect on the
stiffness of foundation for 1 × 2 pile group and hence percentage
lengthening of the structure remains unchanged with variation of S/d.
However, in the case of moderately stiff structure, i.e., Tfixed = 0.6 s
period, lengthening decreases from 66.67% to 51.67% with increasing
S/d ratio from 3.0 to 10.0 respectively for krs = 47.01 as presented in

Table 4
Comparison of fundamental period obtained from present numerical analysis and empirical expression.
Fundamental period of superstructure Raft thickness Raft soil relative Pile group Fundamental period incorporating soil structure interaction (Tssi), s
(Tfixed), s (m) stiffness
(krs) Empirical approach [21] Present study (free % variation
vibration)
a0 = 0.05 a0 = 0.3 a0 = 1.0 Avg.

0.3 1.0 47.01(rigid) 1× 2 0.85 0.82 0.74 0.80 0.80 Nil

0.6 2× 2 1.02 0.97 0.91 0.97 1.00 3.0
1.0 3× 3 1.29 1.18 1.17 1.21 1.50 23.97
2.0 5× 5 2.17 2.04 2.06 2.09 2.10 0.48

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Table 5
Variation in percentage lengthening of Tssi for symmetric and asymmetric pile length configuration using Abaqus CAE [1].
System considered (krs) S/d Tfixed Tssi % lengthening
(Tssi Tfixed ) × 100
Tfixed

1.27 10 0.6 s 1.0 s 67%

1.27 10 0.6 s 1.4 s 133%

47.01 3 1.0 s 1.5 s 50%

47.01 3 1.0 s 1.62 s 62%

1.27 3 1.0 s 1.62 s 62%

1.27 3 1.0 s 1.80 s 80%

(continued on next page)

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Table 5 (continued)

System considered (krs) S/d Tfixed Tssi % lengthening

(Tssi Tfixed ) × 100
Tfixed

47.01 3 2.0 s 2.10 s 5%

47.01 3 2.0 s 2.50 s 25%

Fig. 6. Schematic representation of soil-pile-structure interaction model for Tfixed = 2.0 s developed in SAP v20 [16] for (a) Symmetric and (b) Asymmetric pile
length configuration.

Fig. 7(a). A similar trend is observed in the case of krs = 1.27 as pre­
sented in Fig. 7(b). The variation in percentage lengthening of the
period with the change of S/d ratio from 3 to 10 maybe because of
group effect of relatively more numbers of piles in 2 × 2 pile group in
case of Tfixed = 0.6 s as compared to 1 × 2 pile group for Tfixed = 0.3 s.
7.2.3. Effect of flexibility of raft on period of the structure
The effect of raft flexibility on fundamental period of piled raft sup­
ported structural system embedded in soft clay is presented in Fig. 8. It is
observed that an increase in raft flexibility has a considerable effect on
the lengthening of the period. For instance, Tfixed = 0.6 s period of su­
perstructure supported on piled raft foundation lengthens from 66.67%
to 120% with a change in raft-soil relative stiffness (krs) from 47.01 to
1.27. Similarly, the lengthening varies from 50% to 62% and 5% to 25%
for Tfixed = 1.0 s and 2.0 s respectively with the change in raft-soil re­
lative stiffness (krs) from 47.01 to 1.27. This may be due to the change in
the considerable mass of raft involved in the fundamental mode of vi­
bration. The change in lengthening percentage gradually lessens due to
the fact that the SSI effect becomes marginal in a flexible period of the
structure as already pointed out in another study elsewhere [42].
7.3. SeismicResponse of Soil-Piled Raft-Structure system
Base shear at column and pile head is the primary design response
parameters within the elastic range of deformation for design of piled
raft supported structural system. Shear force at column and pile head is
computed for all cases of piled raft supported structural system con­
sidered in the present study with sinusoidal, swept-sine, and 1995 Kobe
motion applied at the base. Column head shear (VB,col) and pile head
shear (VB,pile) are normalized with respect to base shear (VB,fixed) ob­
tained from the fixed base condition of the superstructure and are
presented in terms of (VB,col/VB,fixed) and (VB,pile/VB fixed) for column and
pile head shear respectively. The normalized shear may help to un­
derstand the influence of incorporation of dynamic soil-piled raft-
structure interaction on seismic force distribution in superstructure and
foundation members.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Table 6 sine and swept-sine motions. While, VB,col/VB,fixed increases by 54.8% in

Comparison of results obtained from Abaqus_6.8 and SAP_2000 for case of the structure having Tfixed = 1.0 s supported on asymmetric pile
Tfixed = 2.0 s. length configuration compared to its symmetric counterpart under
System considered (krs) Tssi (s) 1995 Kobe motion for the case of for krs = 1.27 as presented in
Fig. 10(e). This issue may be studied in detail as future scope of work.
Abaqus- SAP- On the other hand, the influence of asymmetry on the variation of
6.8 (free 2000
normalized pile head shear with the period of the structure is significantly
vibration) (modal
analysis) high compared to symmetric pile group configuration. For instance, it is
observed from Fig. 9(f) that pile head shear increased by 113% for a
47.01 2.10 s 2.24 s structure having Tfixed = 1.0 s with the change in pile configuration from
symmetric to asymmetric under 1995 Kobe motion. Fig. 9(b) and (d) in
case of for krs = 47.01 under both sine and swept-sine motion indicate that
the influence of asymmetry significantly decreases with an increase in
period of the structure. Figs. 9(f) and 10(f) indicates that normalized pile
head shear increases noticeably with increasing the period of structure in
both symmetric and asymmetric cases under the 1995 Kobe motion.
Further, Fig. 10(b) illustrates that in case of flexible raft-soil relative
stiffness (krs = 1.27) under sine motion, there is a marginal change in the
value of normalized pile head shear with the change of the period of the
47.01 2.50 s 2.38 s
structure. However, it is observed from Fig. 10(d) that in case of sym­
metric configuration for krs = 1.27 under swept-sine motion, the value of
normalized pile head shear increases with increasing period of the struc­
ture whereas marginal change is observed for normalized pile head shear
in the case asymmetric configuration.

7.3.2. Effect of S/D ratio

Figs. 11(a)–(f) and 12(a)–(f) illustrates the effect of S/d ratio on
normalized shear at column and pile with input motion of sine, swept-
sine, and 1995 Kobe motion for krs = 47.01 and 1.27 respectively. It is
1.27 2.50 s 2.31 s
observed that the effect of variation of S/d on normalized column head
shear is marginal irrespective of different krs with few exceptions.
However, Figs. 11(c) and 12(e) indicate that VB,col/VB,fixed marginally
increases and decreases with increasing S/d ratio respectively. In the
case of shear transferred to pile head, a maximum variation of 30% is
observed for Tfixed = 0.6 s with krs = 1.27 under sinusoidal motion
(refer Fig. 12(b)). Figs. 11(b), (d), and (f) and 12(b), (d), and (f) pre­
sents that normalized pile head shear subdues with increasing S/d ratio.

1.27 2.5 s 2.46 s 7.3.3. Effect of flexibility of raft

7.3.1. Effect of asymmetric pile length configuration
The effect of asymmetry in pile length on normalized shear force at
column and pile head with respect to period of structure (Tfixed) are
presented in Figs. 9(a)–(f) and 10(a)–(f) for krs = 47.01 and 1.27 re­
spectively. Figs. 9(a), (c) and (e) and 10(a), (c) and (e) presents var­
iation of normalized shear at column (VB,col/VB,fixed) and Figs. 9(b), (d)
and (f) and 10(b), (d), and (f) presents variation of normalized shear at
pile head (VB,pile/VB,fixed) under sinusoidal, swept-sine and 1995 Kobe
real time motion respectively.
It is observed that variation of normalized shear at the column for
Tfixed = 1.0 s and 2.0 s is found to be following the same trend for both
symmetric and asymmetric pile length configuration under sine and
swept-sine motion as presented in Figs. 9(a) and (c) and 10(a) and (c)
respectively. Further, the influence of asymmetric pile length config­
uration is also marginal as compared to symmetric counterpart for both
The effect of flexibility of raft on the transfer of shear force at the
column and pile head is presented in Fig. 13(a)–(f). Under the sinu­
soidal motion, the influence of the change of raft flexibility on VB,col/
VB,fixed is negligible (refer Fig. 13(a)), while, a significant reduction in
VB,pile/VB fixed is observed with increase in raft flexibility (refer
Fig. 13(b)). A similar trend is observed under swept-sine except for
Tfixed = 0.3 s as observed from Fig. 13(c). It is found that normalized
column shear increases with increasing flexibility of raft. In the case of
Kobe motion, noticeable change in the column and pile head shear is
observed only for a moderately stiff period of structure (Tfixed = 0.6 s),
where column shear increased by 55% and pile head shear subdued by
18.5% due to increase in raft flexibility as shown in Fig. 13(e) and (f).
However, the raft flexibility effect is relatively lesser in the case of shear
at pile head in the case of the 1995 Kobe motion. A maximum variation
of around 45% is observed in normalized pile head shear for
Tfixed = 0.3 s under swept-sine loading (refer Fig. 13(d)) due to an
increase in krs from 1.27 to 47.01.
7.4. Maximum bending moment along pile length
This section presents maximum bending moment distribution along
the depth of the pile considering 1995 Kobe earthquake motion. The
bending moment is found for the right-sided central-peripheral pile as
indicated in dark colour in Fig. 14, where the bending moment is found
to be maximum. The bending moment is primarily aimed to assess
the influence of parametric variation of different influential parameters
and further to verify the safety limit considering collapse criteria.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al.
Fig. 7. Percentage lengthening of Tssi with respect to S/d ratio for (a) krs = 47.01 and (b) krs = 1.27 respectively.
Fig. 8. Percentage lengthening of Tssi for different raft flexibility with S/
d = 3.0.
The ultimate moment of resistance of the pile section is considered as
the safety margin which is calculated as 5093 kN-m (i.e.
M = × Z = 415 × 12.28 × 106 N mm = 5093 kN - m ) considering Fe
415 grade of steel. It is observed that the bending moment becomes
maximum in between 0.3 m and 1 m depth below raft for parametric
cases considered herein. This observation is in line with the results re­
ported by Banerjee [4]. Table 7 presents maximum bending moment
along depth of symmetric pile length cases for different fixed base period
of superstructure i.e. Tfixed = 0.30 s, 0.60 s, 1.0 s, and 2.0 s under 1995
Kobe motion. It is evident from Table 7 that the maximum bending
moment is found to increase with the increase in period of superstructure
i.e. Tfixed = 0.30 s to 2.0 s respectively due to involvement of increase in
mass resulting to higher magnitude of inertial forces. However, the
maximum moment in all these cases is lesser than the ultimate moment
of resistance of the pile section which indicates a higher margin of safety
from the point of view of collapse criteria. Furthermore, Fig. 14 presents
the influence of other parametric variations such as pile length asym­
metry and raft flexibility on the bending moment profile along the depth
of pile for a sample case of Tfixed = 2.0 s. It is observed from Fig. 14 that
915
Structures 28 (2020) 905–922
the effect of asymmetry of pile length on the maximum bending moment
is marginal showing a maximum increase of 8% compared to symmetric
counterpart. However, a significant influence of variation of raft flex­
ibility is observed on the maximum bending moment distribution for
both symmetric and asymmetric configuration of piled raft foundation.
For instance, the maximum bending moment is found to increase by 78%
for change in krs from 1.27 to 47.01 for both symmetric and asymmetric
configuration of the piled raft. The reason for such a significant increase
in bending moment may be due to higher inertial mass of raft in case of
rigid raft (i.e. krs = 47.01) attributing increase in lateral shear at pile
head as compared to the flexible raft (i.e. krs = 1.27). Similar observa­
tions are also reported by studies reported elsewhere [11]. Furthermore,
it is observed from Fig. 14 that positive bending moment developed at
pile head progressively reduced to negative and finally reduced to zero at
the tip of the pile. The cross over point from positive to negative bending
moment occurred at depth in between 14 m and 15 m. The observation is
similar to the observations reported elsewhere [4,48,49,22].
8. Summary and conclusions
The present study emphasizes on investigating seismic behavior of
piled raft supported structural system embedded in soft clay in­
corporating the effect of dynamic soil-foundation-structure interaction
using 3D FEM based numerical analysis. A comprehensive analysis of
the influence of parametric variations of different influential para­
meters of piled raft system, such as the asymmetric distribution of pile
length, S/d, raft flexibility, and period of the superstructure on dynamic
characteristics and response of the whole structural system is carried
out under the scope of the present study. Finally, the present study
leads to the following broad conclusions:
1 The fundamental period of the soil-pile raft-structural system gets
lengthened maximum in the order of 167%, 67%, 50%, and 5% for
0.30 s, 0.60 s, 1.0 s, and 2.0 s period superstructures respectively
due to the incorporation of soil flexibility. However, such
lengthening may further go up significantly when pile lengths are
asymmetric in the group and attached to flexible raft. This may be
due to the decrease in lateral stiffness of foundation as compared
to symmetric piled raft foundation having equal length. On the
other hand, an increase in S/d ratio and raft-soil relative stiffness
may cause a decrease in the lengthening of the period for mod­
erate range of period of structure (i.e., Tfixed = 0.6 s). While al­
most zero change is observed in case of short period structure (i.e.
C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 9. Normalized base shear at column and pile head for symmetric and asymmetric pile length configuration with s/d = 3.0 and krs = 47.01: (a) and (b) represents
responses under sinusoidal wave; (c) and (d) under swept-sine motion and (e) and (f) under 1995 Kobe motion.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 10. Normalized base shear at column and pile head for symmetric and asymmetric pile length configuration with s/d = 3.0 and krs = 1.27: (a) and (b) represents
responses under sinusoidal wave; (c) and (d) under swept-sine motion and (e) and (f) under 1995 Kobe motion.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 11. Normalized shear at column and pile head for different s/d ratios with krs = 47.01 (a) and (b) represents responses under sinusoidal wave; (c) and (d) under
swept-sine motion and (e) and (f) under 1995 Kobe motion.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 12. Normalized shear at column and pile head for different s/d ratios with krs = 1.27 (a) and (b) represents responses under sinusoidal wave; (c) and (d) under
swept-sine motion and (e) and (f) under 1995 Kobe motion.

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C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Fig. 13. Normalized shear at column and pile head for different raft-soil relative stiffness with S/d = 3 (a) and (b) represents responses under sinusoidal wave; (c)
and (d) under swept-sine motion and (e) and (f) under 1995 Kobe motion.

920
C.H. Chaudhuri, et al. Structures 28 (2020) 905–922

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial

interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ­
ence the work reported in this paper.

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