Effectiveness of a vertical micro-pile system for mitigating lateral spreading damage on pile groups: 1g shake table tests

In this study, effectiveness of a micro-pile system as a lateral spreading countermeasure is evaluated using 1g shake table model tests on a 3x3 pile group. For this purpose, two physical models including a benchmark model without any mitigation measure and a model remediated with micro-piles were built and tested. Both models were densely instrumented with various sensors to monitor the behavior of the soil and the piles during lateral spreading. In general, the results of the shake table tests on these models showed that the micro-pile system deployed in current research did not considerably reduce the kinematic lateral force as well as the induced bending moments due to lateral spreading on the pile group. Moreover, the accelerations recorded on the pile cap of the model remediated with micro piles were amplified compared to the case where no mitigation measure is adopted.