EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS SUPPORTED ON PILES USING BEAM ON SPRING MODEL

Abstract

The practical and simple analysis method is proposed for the earthquake response of the buildings supported on a large number of piles. The proposed model is based on the beam-on-spring model which consists of lumped masses, beam elements, horizontal soil springs, dampers and shear soil springs taking into consideration of pile group effects for the simplified method. The group-factor of horizontal soil springs is simply evaluated from the group-factor of a pile-soil system, and shear soil spring is estimated from the approximate equation. The accuracy of the proposed method is demonstrated by the simulation analysis of the observed earthquake record.