Vasileios Drosos, Amalia Giannakou, Jacob Chacko, A. Papageorgiou and Sjoerd de Wit have co-authored a paper titled “Investigation of Post-Failure Axial Capacity of Lightly Reinforced Concrete Piles” and published in the Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering in Rome. The paper presents a methodology developed to answer whether a pile whose shear structural capacity has been exceeded is still able to carry the vertical loads of the superstructure following an earthquake. This proposed methodology hinges on the observation that axial capacity of shear-failed columns does not initiate until the structural member loses all of its shear capacity and can be useful for the preliminary seismic evaluation of poorly reinforced pile foundations. Analysis of a case-study from northern Europe using the proposed methodology have shown that piles can bear vertical loads even after shear failure has initiated, as long as the imposed drifts on the pile are less than a critical value. For most of the cases analyzed, the pile fails in shear, but it seems that it can continue bearing the vertical loads. This finding is likely to have a significant influence on the design of retrofit approaches.
Check out the paper here!
