Numerical analysis of soil-pile interaction problems using 8-node hexahedral finite and infinite elements
Palavras-chave:
soil-pile interaction, finite element method, reduced integration, contact mechanicsResumo
A numerical analysis to study three-dimensional soil-pile interaction problems is presented in this
paper. The soil mass and the pile are spatially discretized using eight-node hexahedral isoparametric elements
with underintegration techniques and hourglass control to suppress volumetric and shear locking. Load transfer
between the soil and the pile is performed by a three-dimensional contact algorithm based on the penalty
method, where the classical Coulomb’s law is adopted as constitutive relation for friction. A corotational
approach at element level is adopted to deal with physically and geometrically nonlinear analysis. For dynamic
analysis, the Newmark’s method is employed for time integration and infinite elements are used at the domain
boundary to avoid the reflection of energy waves in the region of interest, providing a quiet boundary. Numerical
examples are performed and compared with numerical results obtained by other authors in order to verify the
present algorithm.