Static and Dynamic Reliability Analysis of Laterally Loaded Pile Using Probability Density Function Method

Pile foundation is one of the common foundation forms in marine geotechnical engineering, especially in wind power engineering. Its operation safety is seriously affected by many uncertainties, such as the randomness of ground motion in intensity and frequency. The stochastic reliability analysis method can better characterize these uncertainties in the evaluation of the safety performance of pile foundation. The probability density functions (PDFs) of stochastic systems are important prerequisites for reliability analysis. However, for geotechnical problems, the coupling between parametric and excitation randomness and the nonlinear mechanical properties of rock and soil make it very difficult to obtain the associated PDFs. Instead, the probability density evolution method (PDEM) is introduced and is used to investigate the static and dynamic reliability of laterally loaded piles as an example of a geotechnical problem. Compared with Monte Carlo stochastic simulations, PDEM-based computing is shown to be highly efficient when applied to the seismic design of pile in geotechnical engineering, and its calculation efficiency is 20 times of the former for the seismic dynamic reliability of pile foundation. This study provides a new reference for the efficient design and safety evaluation of offshore pile foundation engineering based on static and dynamic reliability of multiple random factors.