OPTIMAL RADIUS OF KINEMATICALLY AFFECTED PILE INFLUENCED BY LOCAL NONLINEARITY IN COHESIVE SOIL

Abstract

It is known that the bending strain at the head of a vertical, cylindrical fixed-head pile can be minimized by an adequate pile radius, called optimal pile radius, when the kinematic interaction dominates. In general, however, the pile may be influenced by local nonlinearities in soil, such as failure of the soil surrounding the pile. Therefore, This study focuses on the optimal radius of a pile embedded in cohesive soil under local nonlinear conditions. The Seismic Deformation Method (SDM) is used in this study. The SDM is well known as a static method that can appropriately estimate the bending strain at the head of the pile. The results of parametric analyses show that the optimal pile radius tends to increase as the degree of nonlinearity increases.