A series of shaking table tests was recently performed at the U.C. Berkeley PEER Center Earthquake Simulator Laboratory to investigate soil-pile-superstructure interaction in soft clay. The testing program rigorously followed principles of scale model similitude, and model clay soil, model piles, pile groups and superstructures were developed. In addition, a specialized flexible-wall model soil container was designed that allowed the model soil to respond in a free-field fashion unencumbered by container boundary effects. The 58 shaking table tests included sine sweep, low level shaking, and strong shaking excitations, with over 140 channels of strain gage, accelerometer, displacement transducer, and load cell data acquired during each test. Both 1-D and 2-D shaking tests were performed. Pile head loading tests were also carried out to provide estimates of pile head stiffness. Site characterization included in-situ shear strength and shear wave velocity tests. A wide range of analyses were performed investigating the following topics:

• Shaking Table Performance
• Kinematic and Inertial Soil-Pile Interaction
• Single Pile and Pile Group Frequency Response
• Pile Cap Embedment Effects
• Pile Group Effects
• Effects of 2-D Shaking
• Experimentally-Derived P-Y Curves
• Simulation of Observed Site Response with SHAKE91
• System Identification of Single Pile and Pile Group Response
• Pile Head Stiffness Estimates

The test results are also being used as a database with which to calibrate an advanced numerical model for seismic soil-pile interaction implemented in the code GeoFEAP.

Download individual chapters from the Dissertation: "Shaking Table Scale Model Tests of Nonlinear Soil-Pile-Superstructure Interaction in Soft Clay" by Philip J. Meymand, 1998. These files are in Adobe Acrobat format. Download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them.