Development of a three-dimensional soil model for the dynamic analysis of end-bearing pile groups subjected to vertical loads

This paper presents a new analytical model for calculating the steady-state impedance of pile groups subjected to vertical dynamic loads. The derived solution allows considering effects of radially but also vertically propagating soil waves on the soil attenuation function, pile interaction factor, and pile group impedance. The proposed model provides accurate estimates of the soil stress field and of the response of the pile group in the low as well as in the high-frequency range, unlike earlier solutions based on the plane-strain model to describe the soil surrounding the piles, which ignores the vertical soil stress gradient. The latter assumption results in underestimating pile group impedance and overestimating radiation damping for frequencies lower than the cutoff frequencies of the system, which are explicitly captured with the proposed solution.