NZGS Canterbury Branch Meeting

Monday 11th April 2011, Netball Centre, South Hagley Park
Presentation 6.30pm to 7.30pm

Seismic Design of Pile Foundations - Dr Gopal Madabhushi
Reader in Geotechnical Engineering, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT: Pile foundations are widely used around the world to transfer loads from the superstructure into competent soil strata below the ground. Earthquakes can create additional loading scenarios on piles that need special attention. This is particularly true if the pile foundations pass through shallow, liquefiable layers such as saturated, fine sands or silts. There are many examples of distress suffered by pile foundations following soil liquefaction in recent earthquakes. In this paper the experiences from the Haiti earthquake of 2010 will be presented. Several failure mechanisms of piles in liquefiable soils such as pile buckling and excessive settlement of piles in liquefied soil layers were developed at Cambridge University based on extensive centrifuge experiments. It will be shown that some of these anticipated failure mechanisms of pile foundations are confirmed by the observations in Haiti. The value of dynamic centrifuge modelling in deciphering the pile behaviour through observation of failure mechanisms is emphasised.

Dr Madabhushi is lead author of a recent book - Design of pile foundations in liquefiable soils published by Imperial College Press in 2009. His interests are in earthquake engineering and modelling using centrifuge and finite element methods. In particular, his research has been centred on:-