Pseudostatic Seismic Response Analysis of a Pile Group in a Soil Slope

This paper presents a simple approximate pseudostatic method for estimating the maximum internal forces and horizontal displacements of a pile group located in a soil slope. The method is extension of an existing similar method developed by the authors for the case of a horizontal ground surface. The method employed for horizontal ground case involves two main steps: first, the free-field soil movements caused by the earthquake are computed; Then, the response of the pile group is analyzed based on the maximum free-field soil movements as static movements, as well as a static loading at the pile head, which depends on the computed spectral acceleration of the structure being supported. This newly developed methodology takes into account the effects of group interaction and soil yielding. Simple modifications are applied to take into account the effect of slope on seismic deformations of the pile group, making use of the Newmark sliding block method. The applicability of the approach and the developed program is verified by comparisons made with both experimental shaking table tests and the results of a more refined analysis of a pile-supported wharf. It is demonstrated that the proposed method yields reasonable estimates of the pile maximum moment and horizontal displacement for many practical cases, despite its relative simplicity. The simplifying assumptions and the limitations as well as reliability of the methodology are discussed, and some practical conclusions on the performance of the proposed approach are suggested.