Soil-pile interaction during the passage of Rayleigh waves: an analytical solution

A simple analytical solution is presented to calculate the single-pile response when excited by the passage of Rayleigh seismic waves. Closed-form expressions for the horizontal and vertical displacement distributions are presented for piles with finite or infinite length. The analytical results for both free-head and fixed-head piles are obtained through a dynamic Winkler model, with realistic frequency-dependent 'springs' and 'dashpots'. The results of the presented method are in excellent agreement with results of a rigorous solution. It is shown that in vertical motion, the differences between pile and soil displacements are far more significant than in horizontal motion, and therefore, further work is needed to investigate the importance of pile-soil-pile interaction (group effects), because of the vertical component of Rayleigh seismic waves.