Effect of Earthquake Induced Lateral Soil Movement On Pile Behavior

One of the most common causes of ground failure during earthquakes is the liquefaction phenomenon, which produces severe damage to property. Although methods are available for seismic analysis of pile foundations, most of them consider soil to be an elastic material. Collapse of piled foundations in liquefiable areas has been observed in most recent strong earthquakes despite the fact that a large margin of safety is employed in their design. Lateral spreading of gently-sloping deposits of liquefiable sand is a cause of much damage in earthquakes, reportedly more than any other form of liquefaction-induced ground failure. The present investigation finds the effect of earthquake induced lateral soil movement on lateral pile capacity. Parametric study is carried out on the same model by changing the ground surface to different slopes on the top of the non liquefiable layer and by changing the length of the pile in the bottom layer of the non liquefiable layer. The paper focuses on the behaviour of pile under lateral soil movement due to earthquake. The bending moment and displacement behaviour of pile is studied in detail for different slope conditions.