Dynamic behaviour of raft and pile foundations tests and computational models. Pt. 5

A method of analyzing the dynamic response of pile foundations in the frequency domain is proposed in this paper. The method is based on the successive use of boundary integral procedure and substructuring. A fourier decomposition of the boundary integrals with respect to the angular component of each pile is performed in order to reduce the size of the problem and the stiffnesses of the piles are computed using finite element method. The piles are assumed to be connected to a rigid foundation and the final solution is obtained via a relaxation technique. Finally, the technique is applied to a real case and a comparison between numerical and experimental results is presented showing the importance of pile to pile interaction. Only homogeneous properties have been treated but the method can easily be extended to the heterogeneous case. (orig.)