Numerical modeling of the dynamic lateral behavior of geosynthetics-reinforced pile foundation system

This paper presents a finite-element (FE) analysis for simulating the dynamic performance of geosynthetics-reinforced pile foundation system. The (FE) models were constructed using commercial FE program Plaxis 3D Dynamic. The numerical models were verified against the results of a reduced scale model test of geosynthetics-reinforced pile foundation system. A numerical parametric study was carried out to investigate the effect of different design parameters on the effectiveness of the proposed geosynthetics-reinforced pile foundation system. The studied parameters include: the frequency and amplitude of ground motion; the stiffness and strength of the geosynthetic reinforcement, the location of the reinforcement within the backfill material and the thickness of the backfill material. The numerical results indicated that the geosynthetics-reinforcement greatly reduced the maximum lateral acceleration response of the pile cap.