Experimental and finite element analyses of seismic behavior of pile-reinforced soft clayey slope

In this study, a series of shaking table model tests and three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) analyses were performed to mainly investigate the seismic deformations of clayey slopes reinforced by different pile configurations. The influences of ground motion intensity and frequency, and flexural rigidity, length and installation location of pile were systematically investigated. For the different pile configurations considered, the pile-cap system was found to be most effective improving the seismic stability of the clayey slope; the frontal piles tended to experience much larger bending moments than the rear piles, exhibiting a clear shadowing effect of the frontal piles. The acceleration amplification factors and maximum relative displacements of monitoring points along the slope surface were found to generally increase with the elevation, which tended to respectively become smaller and more significant with the increasing ground motion intensity. For pile flexural rigidity larger than 6.03x105 kN<middle dot>m2, the reinforcement performance of the pile-cap system on the clayey slope under seismic shakings could not be effectively improved; besides, the viable pile length and installation location were proposed for improving the seismic stability of clayey slope reinforced by the pile-cap system.