GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 931

A Parametric Study on Factors Affecting Ground Vibrations during Pile

Driving through Finite Element Simulations

Mo Zhang1 and Mingjiang Tao2

1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100
Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, email: mozhang@wpi.edu;
2
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, Ph: 508-831-6487, Fax: 508-831-5808, email:

taomj@wpi.edu.

ABSTRACT
Driven pile has often been used to provide loading support for civil
infrastructure, but the induced ground vibration can cause damage to adjacent
structures. The vibration risk associated with pile driving is often managed via
monitoring ground vibrations that is quantified by peak particle velocity (PPV).
Therefore, a rational approach to predict PPV is desired because the commonly used
scaled-distance equations consider only the distance from driven piles and the input
energy but ignore other important factors. To fulfill this knowledge gap, a finite
element method based parametric study was performed to examine the influence of
soil damping ratio, Young’s Modulus of soil, and the number of loading pulses on
ground vibrations due to pile driving. The results obtained from this study will aid
geotechnical engineers in better managing the risk of pile driving to surrounding
building by designing and executing a proper ground vibration monitoring plan.
INTRODUCTION

Driven pile has often been used to support major infrastructure, such as
industrial and residential buildings, bridge, highway and other structures. However,
pile driving inevitably causes varying degrees of ground vibrations, which may
damage the surrounding structures. Prior to any pile driving operations, state
departments of transportation (DOTs) usually perform risk analysis to address
concerns associated with pile driving vibrations, by understanding the likelihood of
damage from pile installation procedures. The extent of structure damage due to pile
driving is well believed to relate with the amplitude of ground vibrations that is often
quantified in terms of peak particle velocity (PPV). Currently, the PPV is
approximated with the Scaled Distance (SD) approach, which can predict PPV value
from the normalized distance by the energy transmitted from pile driving hammers to
driven piles. One of such SD-based models was proposed by Wiss (Woods 1997) and
reads:
(1)
√
Where D is the horizontal distance from the driven pile, W is the hammer energy
transferred to the pile, k is the ground vibration velocity at one unit of distance from
driven piles, and n is the wave attenuation rate (Tao, Svinkin et al. 2009). The SD
approach is easy to use and considers two important factors (i.e., hammer energy and
distance) affecting ground vibration. However, other factors (e.g., soil properties,

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 932

soil-structure interactions) having significant influence on ground vibrations are not

considered by the SD approach, and a better understanding of pile driving induced
ground vibrations is needed. Therefore, this study aims to provide insights into the
wave attenuation in the surrounding ground during pile driving and identify important
soil parameters so that the pile driving associated risk can be better managed. In
particular, the influence of soil damping ratio, Young’s modulus of soils, and the
number of pulse loading cycles on wave attenuation was examined through a finite
element method (FEM)-based parametric study. This study will assist the
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

geotechnical practitioners to further understand the ground vibration and manage the
induced structure damages more efficiently.

2-D FEM MODEL FOR PILE DRIVING

Basic model
The basic 2-D FEM model for simulating pile driving was set up with PLAXIS 2D,
as shown in Figure 1. The geometry was simulated as an axisymmetric model with
the pile located along the axis of the symmetry. 15-noded elements were chosen to
model the pile and the soil, with the interface being added between the pile and the
soil. The left and right boundaries were horizontally fixed, and the bottom was fixed
in both horizontal and vertical directions. To avoid spurious reflection, absorbent
boundaries were used at the bottom and the right side of the model (Brinkgreve and
Broere 2008). The soil was modeled as a single layer with the thickness of 50 m, and
the ground water level was assumed at the bottom of the layer. The concrete circular
pile, with its dimensions of 20 m by 0.4 m, is modeled as a linear elastic material. As
sand and clay are typical soils encountered in the field, they will be used in this study,
with typical values of their physical properties listed in Table 1.

Figure 1. The geometry of the basic 2-D FEM model

Table 1. Typical values of soil physical parameters required in Plaxis

Soil γ (kN/m3) E (kN/m2) μ c (kN/m2) φ (°) Model Type
Sand 17 50000 0.2 1 31 Hardening Soil
Clay 16 15000 0.3 2 24 Mohr-C. Undrained
Notes: γ is the unit weight, E is Young’s Modulus, μ is Poisson’s ratio, c is cohesion, and φ is
frictional angle. The other properties were used as default values in PLAXIS 2D.

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 933

A dynamic distributed load of 5000kN/m2 was uniformly applied on the top of

the pile to simulate loading exerted by a pile hammer during pile driving, and the
displacement of the pile under the dynamic distributed load can be readily obtained
from the simulations. By plotting dynamic load vs. displacement of the pile, as shown
in Figure 2a, the energy applied to the pile can be calculated as the area enveloped by
the curve. Ground vibrations in terms of PPV at various distances from the driven
pile can be obtained from the waveforms at various nodes (e.g., B to F shown in
Figure 1). Then the relationship between the SD and PPV values can also be
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

established from the FEM simulation results, as illustrated in Figure 2b. The values
for k and n in the SD equation corresponding to the FEM simulation results can be
determined from the best-fit line.

(a) (b)

Figure 2. (a) A sample displacement vs. dynamic force curve; and (b) PPV vs.
SD plots resulted from the FEM simulations and Woods and Jedele’s equations
To verify the results from the FEM simulations, Woods and Jedele’s
equations for approximating PPV values were used in this paper because of their
wide use in the pile driving practice and the lack of detailed information from pile
driving case history data. Based on the SD concept and measured ground vibrations
from field construction projects, Woods and Jedele developed a PPV vs. scaled
distance chart for various soil types. The classification of soil types in Woods and
Jedele’s chart is largely of qualitative nature, in which only qualitative descriptions of
the soils were given. In this chart n values (i.e., the slope in the log-log PPV vs. SD
space to represent the wave attenuation rate in the soil) are 1.5 and 1.1 for soil classes
II and III, respectively (Woods 1997). These two lines corresponding to soil classes
II and III are also plotted in Figure 2b, and the FEM simulation results reveal similar
trend of and are close to one of these two lines. This illustrates that the FEM model
is capable of representing ground vibrations induced by pile driving. Note that the
FEM simulation results are not necessary to fully agree with Woods and Jedele’s
lines, because the soil parameters in the model are not the same as those for soil class
II and III.

Validation of using a single pulse of dynamic loading for modeling pile driving
To simplify FEM simulations, the dynamic loading applied to driven piles
from the hammer was modeled by one single pulse of harmonic loading in this study.

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 934

In reality, however, a pile is usually driven by multiple hammer drops that can
generate continuous wave propagations in the ground, and thus it is possible for
adjacent grounds to experience vibrations of higher magnitudes due to the
superimposition effect of successive waves. If the overlapping effect on ground
vibrations cannot be neglected, the FEM simulation with one loading pulse will
underestimate magnitudes of ground vibrations and thus a multi-pulse dynamic
loading should be used. To investigate this superimposition effect, FEM simulations
with different numbers (ranging from 1 to 5) of loading pulses were performed for
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

both sand and clay. The time interval of 0.99 s was chosen for two consecutive pulses
based on pile driving records from some construction projects in Louisiana.
Waveform trends from the FEM simulations are similar in sand and clay, with the
results showing that it takes a longer time for the wave to dissipate in clay and a
larger extent of wave overlapping effect exists in clay. To be concise, only the
dynamic response of the ground underlain by a clay layer was discussed herein.
Figure 3a shows the dynamic response at ground surface point B located 9.18 meters
away from the driven pile under five-pulse loading, expressed by the particle velocity
time history. Except for a small increase from the first to the second peak, the other
peaks are almost the same. Furthermore, the PPV vs. SD relationships for clay under
various numbers of loading pulses were plotted in Figure 3b, which indicates that the
FEM simulation results under different numbers of loading pulses are almost the
same. Therefore, the PPV values (i.e., ground vibration magnitudes) at different
distances from the pile are not affected significantly by the wave overlapping effect,
and it is justified to simulate ground vibrations during pile driving by using a single
pulse loading.

Determination of soil damping ratio

Soil damping ratio plays an important role in wave attenuation, so its
influence on ground vibrations was investigated in this research. However, the
damping ratio is difficult to determine because it is affected by many factors (shear
strain, soil properties, etc). The estimation procedure of soil damping ratio is
presented first before its influence on ground vibrations was examined by FEM
simulations.
Soil’s damping ratio is composed of viscous and hysteretic components.
Viscous component is represented by the initial damping ratio, which is the constant
item in Equation (2) and independent of the soil shear strain. Hysteretic component is
affected by the reduction of soil shear modulus as shear strain increases and
represented by the shear strain dependent item in Equation (2) (Tsang, Chandler et al.
2006).
ξ ξ ξ (2)
where ξi is the initial damping ratio, ξmax is the maximum hysteretic damping ratio
corresponding to the hypothetical limiting condition of zero shear modulus, γr is the
reference shear strain of soil, and γ is the cyclic shear strain (Tsang, Chandler et al.
2006). Initial and maximum hysteretic damping ratio can be estimated as (Tsang,
Chandler et al. 2006):
ξ % 1.5 0.03PI % 5.8 (3)
ξ % 16 0.1PI % 0.0 (4)

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 935

where PI is the plasticity index.

(b)
(a)
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

Figure 3. (a) Vibration time history at Point B under 5 loading pulses; and (b)
PPV vs. SD under different number of loading pulses
With the above equations, the damping ratio range can reasonably be
approximated if the PI is known. For the sand with a PI of 0, ξi is 1.5% and ξmax is
16%; and for the clay with a PI of 30, ξi is 2.4% and ξmax is 13%. When γ⁄ γ γ
takes the value of 0 or 1 in Equation (2), the corresponding damping ratios are
1.5~17.5% for sand and 2.4~15.4% for clay. The soil damping ratios used for the
subsequent parametric study were chosen from these ranges. In PLAXIS 2D, the
material damping ratio is characterized by Rayleigh formulation and expressed by the
Rayleigh damping coefficients α and β as:
C αM βK (5)
where [C], [M] and [K] are damping, mass and stiffness matrices, respectively. α is a
coefficient that determines the influence of mass on the damping and β is a
coefficient that determines the influence of stiffness on the damping (Brinkgreve and
Broere 2008). These two parameters are required inputs for the FEM dynamic
simulations with Plaxis, which should be determined corresponding to a chosen
damping ratio. A simple approximation method was proposed by Amorosi et al. with
which α and β can be determined from the following relationship (Amorosi, Boldini
et al. 2010):
α 4π f f
β (6)
1
where m and n are the vibration mode numbers, fm and fn are the natural frequencies
at the corresponding vibration modes, which in turn can be estimated with the
following equation :
VS
f 2n 1 (7)
H
where VS is the shear wave velocity of the soil, and H is the thickness of the soil layer.
It is common to choose one frequency at the first vibration mode and the other at the
predominant frequency to approximate the damping coefficient (Park and Hashash
2004). Vibration modes 1 and 5 were selected herein to calculate fn and fm. Typical
shear wave velocities were chosen as follows: 220 m/s for sand and 150 m/s for clay
(Das 1993). Then the values for α and β were approximated for subsequent FEM
simulations by using Eqs. (6) and (7) for chosen damping ratios.

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 936

RESULTS OF FEM PARAMETRIC STUDY

Influence of soil damping ratio on ground vibrations

Five different values of damping ratio were selected to investigate its
influence on wave attenuation and ground vibrations during pile driving based on the
FEM model described previously, with other model conditions and parameters
remaining the same. The corresponding Rayleigh damping coefficients α and β, as
listed in Table 2, were calculated with the natural frequencies of 1.83 HZ and 16.50
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

HZ using Equation (7). The log-log PPV vs. Scaled Distance charts obtained from
the FEM simulations for these 5 cases are shown in Figure 4, and the corresponding k
and n values for the SD equations are summarized in Table 2. Woods and Jedele’s

(a)

Figure 4. Influence of damping ratio values on ground vibrations: (a) PPV

vs. SD with different damping ratio, and (b) the change of k and n with
damping ratio
lines for soil class II and III are also presented in Figure 4a for comparison.
Table 2. Damping ratio parameters and derived SD equation’s k and n values
from FEM simulations on sand
Model # Soil Damping Ratio (%) α β k n
101 Sand 1.5 0.31102 0.00026 0.0533 1.501
102 Sand 5.5 1.1404 0.00095 0.0197 1.678
103 Sand 9.5 1.96978 0.00165 0.0084 1.861
104 Sand 13.5 2.79916 0.00234 0.0045 1.987
105 Sand 17.5 3.62854 0.00304 0.0034 1.952

It is apparent that the FEM simulation results follow the similar trend to those
of Woods and Jedele’s SD lines. As shown in Figure 4b and Table 2, when the
damping ratio increases, k decreases and n increases. The maximum difference
between the n values is about 0.45, which is relatively large given the fact that the n
value falls within the range of 1 to 2. A more pronounced difference among k values
is observed, with the maximum k value 16 times larger than the minimum one. It is

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 937

also apparent that strong relationships exist between damping ratio and k & n values,
as indicated by Figure 4b, which shows that the influence of damping ratio on k & n
values becomes smaller as it approaches the upper limit value (i.e., 17.5% for the
sand in this study). It is well known that the material damping ratio represents the
energy absorbent capacity of the soil. The larger is the damping ratio, the more
energy is absorbed by soil, and the greater is the wave attenuation, which corresponds
to a larger n value but a smaller k. Apparently, the influence of soil’s damping ratio
on wave attenuation and ground vibrations is well captured by the FEM simulations.
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

In addition, the FEM simulation results in this study add some quantitative indicators
to Woods and Jedele’s SD equations, by relating soils’ damping ratio to the k and n
values.

Influence of Young’s modulus of soil

In this section, the FEM simulations were performed for varying values of
Young’s Modulus that are given in Table 3. Figure 5 shows the corresponding FEM
simulation results, with the derived k and n values summarized in Table 3. It is
observed from these results that k decreases and n increases with the increasing
Young’s Modulus. The maximum difference among k values is 0.056 for sand and
less than 0.01 for clay while the difference between the maximum and minimum n
values is about 0.536 for sand, and 0.236 for clay. This indicates that the increasing
of Young’s Modulus hardly affects k values in the SD equations.
Table 3. Influence of Young’s Modulus on ground vibrations
Model # Soil Young's Modulus (kPa) Unit Weight(kN/m3) k n
201 Sand 2.00E+04 15 0.0829 1.329
202 Sand 5.00E+04 17 0.0321 1.785
203 Sand 1.50E+05 22 0.0269 1.865
204 Clay 1.00E+04 16 0.0226 1.732
205 Clay 3.00E+04 18 0.0164 1.902
206 Clay 2.50E+05 20 0.0141 1.968

Figure 5. Influence of Young’s modulus of soil on ground vibration: (a) sand;

and (b) clay

Geo-Risk 2011
 GeoRisk 2011 © ASCE 2011 938

CONCLUSIONS

Structure damage can be caused by ground vibrations during pile driving,

which is mainly dependent on the amplitude of ground vibrations that in turn is
affected by soil properties. A better understanding of soil properties’ influence on
ground vibrations is required for effectively managing the risk of pile driving. Based
on the FEM simulation results, the following conclusions can be drawn:
The superimposition effect associated with multiple loading pulses on ground
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by TEMPLE UNIVERSITY on 09/25/13. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

vibrations is not appreciable, when the time interval between two consecutive loading
pulses was chosen to be 0.99 s. The 2-D FEM model used in this study can predict
the magnitude attention of ground vibrations during pile driving and agrees with the
results from the commonly used Woods and Jedele’s equations.
The FEM simulation results indicate that a large damping ratio can greatly
reduce the intensity of ground vibrations, as reflected by increased wave attenuation
rate (i.e., n values in the SD equation) and decreased k values. The FEM results also
show that the influence of Young’s Modulus of the soil is similar to that of the
damping ratio but to a less extent. Namely, a high Young’s Modulus can also
decrease the intensity of the ground vibrations in a way similar to soil damping ratio.
The parametric study in this paper can help geotechnical engineers manage
the risk of pile driving more effectively by better understanding the influence of soil
properties on pile driving induced ground vibrations, although the simplified 2-D
FEM simulations cannot completely reflect the reality of pile driving processes.

ACKNONWLEDGEMENT

The authors thank Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development for

providing financial support for this study under state project No. 736-9901589.

REFERENCES

Amorosi, A., D. Boldini, and Elia, G. (2010). "Parametric study on seismic ground
response by finite element modelling." Computers and Geotechnics 37: 515-528.
Brinkgreve, R. B. J. and W. Broere (2008). PLAXIS 2D: Finite Element Code for
Soil and Rock Analyses:[user's Guide]-Version 9.0, Balkema.
Das, B. M. (1993). Principles of Soil Dynamics, Brooks/Cole.
Park, D. and Y. M. A. Hashash (2004). "Soil damping formulation in nonlinear time
domain site response analysis." Journal of Earthquake Engineering 8(2): 249-274.
Tao, M., M. Svinkin, and M. Zhang (2009). Update LADOTD Policy on Pile Driving
Vibration Management-Interim Report to Louisiana Transporation Research
Center, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, MA.
Tsang, H.-h., A. M. Chandler, and Lam, N. T.K. (2006). "Simple models for
estimation period-shift and damping in soil." Earthquake Engineering and
Stuctural Dynamics 35(15), 1925-1947.
Woods, R. D. (1997). NCHRP Synthesis of Highway Practice 253: Dynamic Effects
of Pile Installations of Adjacent Structures.

Geo-Risk 2011