Kinematic and inertial seismic load effects on pile foundations in stratified soil

A series of centrifuge experiments were performed with pile foundations in stratified soil to investigate the kinematic and inertial load effects during earthquakes. A single aluminium model pile was embedded into a soft kaolin clay overlying the dense sand. Each experiment was carried out in two flights, to study the kinematic and inertial load effects separately. A few important findings of this study are: (i) the kinematic load induced pile bending is equally important as inertial load induced pile bending during the smaller intensity base excitations, (ii) the bending moment due to inertial loads is predominant in comparison to kinematic bending moment during the larger intensity base excitations, and (iii) the existing methods in literature for determining the pile kinematic bending moment at the interface of two-layered soils are underestimating the bending moment. However, the recently proposed methods are resulting in a better estimation than the old conventional methods