SIMPLIFIED APPROACH FOR PILE AND FOUNDATION INTERACTION ANALYSIS

A simple approach is described for the analysis of soil-Pile interacti ons under static and dynamic lateral loadings. The method uses variati onal calculus to obtain the governing differential equations of motion for the soil-pile system under a harmonic concentrated load at the pi le head with intensity P0 and frequency omega. The pile is treated as a shear beam and the soil is assumed to be a linear elastic material. The solutions are based on a semianalytical and seminumerical approach , and are brought to a form that makes it possible to predict the dyna mic displacements, stiffness, and damping for different soils ana end conditions of the pile. Two cases are investigated: (1) A pile clamped to a rigid bottom underlying an elastic soil layer; and (2) a floatin g pile in an elastic half-space. Numerical results are presented to il lustrate the method and investigate the dynamic stiffness and damping of the soil-pile system. The complex frequency responses of the soil-p ile system for typical values of the stiffness and hysteretic material damping of the soil are also presented. The numerical computations re quired for all solutions are modest.