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PSEUDO-STATIC RESPONSE OF PILED RAFTS FOR DIFFERENT PILE HEAD

CONNECTIONS

Conference Paper · June 2019

DOI: 10.7712/120119.7222.18736

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 Available online at www.eccomasproceedia.org
Eccomas Proceedia COMPDYN (2019) 4233-4240

COMPDYN 2019
7th ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on
Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering
M. Papadrakakis, M. Fragiadakis (eds.)
Crete, Greece, 24–26 June 2019

PSEUDO-STATIC RESPONSE OF PILED RAFTS FOR DIFFERENT

PILE HEAD CONNECTIONS
Prasun Halder1 and Bappaditya Manna2
1
Research Scholar
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,
Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India-110016
e-mail: prasun.siliguri@gmail.com
2
Associate Professor
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,
Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India-110016
e-mail: bmanna@civil.iitd.ac.in

Abstract

The connection condition of pile head with the raft i.e. rigid and hinged connection plays an
important role in defining the behavior of piled raft system under seismic loads. In the present
study, an attempt is made to understand the effect of different pile head connections on the
response of piled rafts subjected to earthquake motions by using finite element-based pro-
gram PLAXIS 3D. Here, the pseudo-static approach is used by substituting the real earth-
quake load with an equivalent static horizontal load on the foundation. This pseudo-static
load is calculated by multiplying the applied vertical load with the seismic coefficient of a
particular earthquake and applied at the raft level. A three-dimensional numerical model of
piled raft, validated using a geotechnical centrifuge test data available in the literature, is
used to study the response of piled raft for Uttarkashi (1991) and Sikkim (2011) earthquake
pseudo-static loading conditions. Analyses results are presented in terms of pile-raft load
sharing, normalized lateral displacement and bending moment of pile. Results show that piles
in a piled raft foundation carry about 25% to 57% and raft carries about 43% to 75% of the
pseudo-static load depending upon the pile head connection conditions. The lateral displace-
ment is maximum at pile head portion for both the connections. For rigidly connected piles,
the maximum bending moment occurs at the pile head whereas, piles with hinged connection
show zero bending moment at top and maximum value at a certain depth from pile head.

Keywords: Piled Raft, Connection Condition, Pseudo-Static Analysis, Finite Element Model,
Lateral Displacement, Bending Moment.

ISSN:2623-3347 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Eccomas Proceedia.

Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of COMPDYN 2019.
doi: 10.7712/120119.7222.18736

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

1 INTRODUCTION
Piled raft is widely recognized as an efficient foundation type for high-rise buildings due to
its effectiveness in load sharing between the raft and piles under the action of vertical load.
The settlement of the raft can be limited to acceptable value by incorporating the piles under
the raft [1]. A number of design concepts and guidelines regarding piled raft foundations have
been reported by various researchers [2, 3, 4, 5, 6] over the years. But in earthquake-prone
areas, the safety of the piled raft foundation against earthquake forces should be ensured dur-
ing the design process of the foundation. In this connection, one of the very popular and prac-
tical method is to analyze the seismic behavior piled raft by applying an equivalent static
horizontal force at the foundation level. The connection condition of piles with the raft (rigid
and hinged) plays an important role in defining the response of piled raft under seismic load-
ing condition. Few numbers of literatures have been published regarding the lateral and cyclic
loading tests on piled rafts [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. However, the response of piled raft foundation
with different pile head connections subjected to horizontal and seismic load in addition to
vertical load has not been well explored till date due to intrinsic complexities related to pile-
raft-soil interaction.
In this paper, the influence of different pile head connections i.e. rigid and hinged on the
response of piled raft under pseudo-static load of Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi (1991) earth-
quakes is studied using finite element method. The responses of piled raft are presented in
terms of pile-raft load sharing, lateral displacement and bending moment of piles.

2 FINITE ELEMENT MODEL AND PSEUDO-STATIC LOADING

The numerical modelling of the present study is done using finite element-based software
PLAXIS 3D [12] which is an efficient tool to deal with soil-structure interaction problem. The
schematic diagram of the 3D finite element (FE) model is presented in Figure 1.

Vertical load
Piled raft
Pseudo-static load

Soil volume

Figure 1: Finite element model of piled raft system.

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

Sides of the model are restricted to lateral movement and the base is restrained from both
horizontal and vertical movements. The soil domain is created using the borehole option in
PLAXIS 3D. The soil volume is modelled using 10-noded tetrahedral soil elements. The dis-
placement of the soil particle due to externally applied load is calculated at the nodes of the
soil element. Medium meshing scheme is selected for the present FE model.
The conventional linear elastic perfectly plastic Mohr-Coulomb model is used to simulate
the behavior of the sand. This model requires fewer number of input parameters for the soil i.e.
Young’s modulus (E), Poisson’s ratio (ν), Angle of internal friction (ϕ), cohesion (c). A 4 m
square raft having 1 m thick-ness is modelled using a plate element. The embedded pile ele-
ment option is used to model 4 no of 9 m long piles having 500 mm diameter (d). The piles
are placed at 2 m center-to-center spacing under the raft. The raft and piles are considered to
behave linear-elastically in this study. Rigid and hinged connections are considered between
the pile heads and raft using the available options during the modelling of the piles. In PLXIS,
the rigid connection indicates a case where the displacement and rotation of the pile head are
both coupled with the displacement and rotation of the raft. On the other hand, hinged connec-
tion refers to a case where only the displacement of the pile head is directly coupled with that
of the raft [12]. A vertical load of 5880 kN is applied on the piled raft model. The properties
of sand, pile and raft used for the analysis are taken from [13] and presented in Table 1.

Properties Soil Pile Raft

Elastic modulus, E (kN/m2) 40 × 103 42 × 106 70 × 106
Friction angle, ϕ (Degree) 31 - -
Cohesion (c) 1 - -
Poisson’s ratio, ν 0.3 0.2 0.35
Unit weight, γ (kN/m3) 16.3 24 24

Table 1. Properties of soil, pile and raft used for analysis.

In the current study, the three-dimensional piled raft model is validated using the results
presented in [13]. The vertical settlement of piled raft and the pile load proportion are com-
pared with the reported values. Table 2 shows the comparison between the present FE analy-
sis and the reported value in the literature.

Parameters Settlement Pile load proportion

(mm) (%)
Present FE analysis 22.53 45.3
Kumar et al. [13] 21.0 47

Table 2. Comparison of results.

Here, the pile load proportion is calculated as the percentage of total applied vertical load
carried by the piles only in a piled raft. From Table 2, it can be seen that the obtained results
of the current FE analysis are in close agreement with that of the literature. The settlement of
piled raft is over predicted by only 7.4% whereas, the pile load proportion is under predicted
by only 3.6% in comparison to the reported values. Therefore, this validated 3D FE model is
used to investigate the response of piled raft foundation for different pile head connections
under pseudo-static loading condition.

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

The current study is carried out to investigate the response of piled raft system under the
action of seismic load using the pseudo-static approach. In this method, the seismically in-
duced load is replaced with equivalent static horizontal load to be acted at the level of the raft
along with the application of vertical load. This particular horizontal load is known as pseudo-
static load. This load is calculated by multiplying the applied vertical load with the seismic
coefficient of a particular earthquake. The soil amplification effect is not considered in this
approach. Figure 2 shows the time-acceleration histories of the earthquake input motions i.e.
Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi (1991) used for the pseudo-static analysis. The peak ground
accelerations (PGA) of the Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi (1991) earthquakes are 0.202g and
0.38g respectively. The equivalent static horizontal loads for Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi
(1991) earthquakes are calculated as 1187.1 kN and 2234.4 kN respectively.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: Time-acceleration history of earthquake events: (a) Sikkim (2011); (b) Uttarkashi (1991).

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This section highlights the results obtained from the finite element analysis. Emphasis is
given on the load sharing between piles and raft as well as on the structural behavior of piles
in a piled raft system for both rigid and hinged connections.

3.1 Load sharing between piles and raft

The proportion of load sharing between piles and raft is presented in the Table 3.

Rigid Connection Hinged Connection

Pseudo-static Load
Pile load Raft load Pile load Raft load
proportion (%) proportion (%) proportion (%) proportion (%)
Sikkim (2011)- 51.3 48.7 25.5 74.5
1187.1 kN
Uttarkashi (1991)- 56.8 43.2 37.4 62.6
2234.4 kN

Table 3. Proportion of load shared between piles and raft.

From Table 3, it is evident that piles carry majority of the applied pseudo-static load as
compared to the raft component in a piled raft system in case of rigid pile head connection. It
is noteworthy that with the increase of the horizontal pseudo-static load, the piles share more
load than the raft in a piled raft system. However, in case of hinged connection, the raft takes
higher load than the piles. It can also be noted that the raft load proportion decreases with in-
creasing pseudo-static load i.e. increasing PGA values of earthquake motions.

3.2 Lateral displacement of pile

Figure 3 shows the normalized lateral displacement (U/d) profile along the length of pile
for rigidly connected piles with raft. Here, U is lateral displacement and d is diameter of pile.

Figure 3: Variation of lateral displacement with depth of pile for rigid connection.

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

It can be noticed from Figure 3 that the lateral displacement is maximum at the pile head and
becomes zero at pile tip. The normalized lateral displacements are found 0.016 and 0.045 for
Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi (1991) earthquakes receptively. With higher magnitude of
pseudo-static force, the lateral displacement also becomes larger. The lateral displacement
(U/d) profile along the length of pile for hinged connection is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Variation of lateral displacement with depth of pile for hinged connection.

In this case the lateral displacement becomes higher than the rigid connection case. The nor-
malized lateral displacements are found 0.025 and 0.078 for Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi
(1991) earthquakes receptively.

3.3 Bending moment of pile

Figure 5 shows the bending moment distribution along the length of the pile for rigidly
connected piles with the raft.

Figure 5: Variation of bending moment with depth of pile for rigid connection.

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

It can be observed from Figure 5 that the maximum bending moment occurs at the pile head
due to fixed connection with the raft. It can also be noted that bending moment gets trans-
formed from positive to negative along the pile length and finally comes to zero at pile tip.
The maximum bending moments, as found from Figure 5, are 192 kN-m and 380 kN-m for
Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi (1991) earthquakes respectively. Here also the bending moment
increases with the increase of PGA of the earthquake motion. Figure 6 presents the bending
moment profile for piles having hinged connection with the raft.

Figure 6: Variation of bending moment with depth of pile for hinged connection.

It is noticeable that for the hinged connection, the bending moment of pile starts from zero
and attains the maximum value at the pile depth ranging from 2 m to 3 m and finally comes to
zero again at the pile tip. The maximum bending moments, as noted from Figure 6, are 147
kN-m and 394 kN-m for Sikkim (2011) and Uttarkashi (1991) earthquakes respectively.

4 CONCLUSIONS
From the present study, the following can be concluded.
• The piles in a piled raft foundation are found to carry 25% to 57% and raft is found
to share 43% to 75% of the pseudo-static load depending upon the pile head con-
nection conditions.
• The load proportion of raft is found to decrease with increasing magnitude of
pseudo-static load i.e. increasing PGA value of earthquake motions irrespective of
the pile head connection condition.
• The lateral displacement is observed to have the maximum value at the pile head
portion for both the connections.
• For rigidly connected piles, the maximum bending moment occurs at the pile head
and the bending moment profile changes from positive to negative at a pile depth
of 1.5m. However, piles with hinged connection exhibit zero bending moment at
the pile head and maximum value at the pile depth ranging from 2m to 3m.

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 P. Halder and B. Manna

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