Effect of Lateral Cyclic Loading on Drilled Shaft within an MSE Wall

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249
² KMA Consulting Engineers, Inc., 1010 Berlin Road, Cherry Hill, NJ 08034

^* Corresponding author: jie.huang@utsa.edu

Abstract

Drilled shafts are often subjected to various lateral loads due to earth pressure, wind loads and/or impact loads. Many studies have investigated the behavior of drilled shafts under lateral loads. However, there is limited study on the effect of cyclic loading on drilled shafts, which is of great importance during a hurricane strike. This paper encompasses a numerical study using three-dimensional (3D) finite difference software, FLAC3D, which investigated interaction between a drilled shaft and an MSE wall under cyclic loading event. The backfill material was simulated by a stress-dependent model, which can account for the hardening due to confining stresses. The interactions between dissimilar materials were represented by frictional interface at the contacts. The numerical simulation scrutinized the effects of soil friction angle and the loading cycles on the performance of the drilled shaft and MSE wall under both loading and unloading conditions. The result indicates that the cyclic loading leads to gradual accumulation of the displacement, which cannot be effectively considered in current design method.