Seismic response of piles to obliquely incident SH, SV, and P waves

The response of single piles to vertically and obliquely incident SH, SV, and P waves is obtained by a hybrid boundary element (BEM) formulation. The piles are idealized as compressible beam-columns and the soil, as a hysteretic viscoelastic half-space. A new Green function corresponding to the displacement field due to a dynamic point force in the interior of a semi-infinite solid has been developed and implemented. The governing differential equations of motion for the piles are solved exactly for distributed periodic loading intensities. These solutions are coupled with the BEM numerical solutions for the soil domain by satisfying equilibrium and displacement compatibility at the pile-soil interface. The salient features of the seismic response are identified in several nondimensional plots that encompass a wide spectrum of geometrical and material parameters commonly encountered in practice. The results of the analyses compare favorably with the limited data available in the literature.