Research on the Dynamic Response of a Slope Reinforced by a Pile-Anchor Structure under Seismic Loading

Abstract

In earthquake-prone areas, pile-anchor structures are widely employed for slope reinforcement due to their reliable performance. Current research has primarily focused on static and quasi-static analyses of slopes reinforced by using pile-anchor structures, with limited investigation into their dynamic response. In this work, the finite element method (FEM) is used to study the dynamic behavior of a pile-anchor slope system, and the extended finite element method (XFEM) is used to simulate the progressive failure processes of piles. Three different reinforcement schemes, which include no support, pile support, and pile-anchor support, are considered to examine the performance of the pile-anchor structure. The simulation results suggest that the pile-anchor structure displays a reduction of 39.6% and 40.6% in the maximum shear force and bending moment of the piles, respectively, compared to the pile structure. The XFEM is utilized to model the progressive failure process of the piles subjected to seismic loading. We find that crack initiation in the pile body near the slip surface, for both the pile supported and the pile-anchor supported conditions, occurs when the peak ground acceleration arrives. Crack growth in the piles completes in a very short period, with two distinct increments of crack area observed. The first increment occurs when the peak ground acceleration arrives and is significantly larger than the second increment. Consequently, for the seismic design of piles, it is necessary to strengthen the pile body around slip surfaces. The novelty of this paper is that we realize the simulation of crack initiation and propagation in piles subjected to seismic loading.

Seismically-induced permanent displacements of slopes using 3D Nested Newmark method

“…Numerical simulations are able to provide a realistic response regarding stresses and strains of real-world slopes during earthquakes but subjected to large computational burden (Du et al, 2023;Li et al, 2023). Because of its advantage of easy to use and practical rationality, the Newmark-based sliding block approach has been widely used to assess the seismic permanent displacements of a variety of engineering structures (Newmark, 1965;Saygili and Rathje, 2008;Leshchinsky, 2018;Mathews et al, 2019;Song et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2019;Zheng et al, 2020).…”