Abstract:
The majority of heavy or strongly loaded structures, for instance high-rise buildings, large span bridges or
gas storage tanks are founded on pile groups. However, current design codes and guidelines do not provide
a standard procedure for their design under lateral dynamic and high-cyclic loading arising from e.g. wind,
temperature or earthquake loads. To establish appropriate design strategies, a better understanding of the
pile-soil, pile-pile and pile-cap interaction is required. This paper is focused on finite element backcalculations of centrifuge tests on single piles and pile groups subjected to up to 500 lateral load cycles. For
the finite element simulations, a special calculation procedure is applied, combining two kinds of
constitutive models, a conventional (hypoplasticity with intergranular strain extension) and a special highcycle accumulation (HCA) model. The parameters of the constitutive models are calibrated based on static
and cyclic laboratory tests on the sand used in the centrifuge tests. The performance of the applied numerical
procedure is evaluated based on a detailed comparison of the simulation results with the measured data
from the centrifuge tests. Overall the applicability of the used numerical strategy for simulating the behavior
of pile groups subjected to high-cyclic loading is shown.