Verification of dynamic soil-pile interaction

A real-size pile embedded in a sand layer with a thickness of over 5m has been subjected to simulated seismic shaking using a large-scale shaking table. The major objectives of this study were to; 1) produce reliable experimental results that can be used to calibrate currently available numerical methods and, ultimately, design guidelines for pile foundations, and 2) improve our understanding of dynamic soil-pile iteraction. This paper first highlights the results obtained from our large-scale shaking-table tests. The free-field motions and pile responses obtained from the tests were then compared with those from numerical analyses. The comparisons were reasonably satisfactory.