Influence of the pile toe condition on the dynamic response of a group of pile foundations

The anchorage of the piles on a stiffer soil layer plays an important role to transmit the loads of the superstructure to the soil. Depending on the pile toe condition, three configurations of piles are considered: floating piles, rested, and anchored piles. To study the effect of the pile toe condition on the dynamic response of pile and pile groups, a three-dimensional finite element modeling of the soil–pile–slab dynamic interaction is presented. The soil and piles are represented as continuum solids and the slab by structural elements. Quiet boundaries are placed at the boundaries of the model to avoid wave reflection. The formulation is based on the substructuring method. The dynamic response is obtained in terms of the dynamic impedances. In this study the dynamic response of the floating, rested, and anchored piles are analyzed and the group effect is shown. An analysis of the horizontal and vertical pile foundation impedances is presented and the results are compared with different configurations.