Dynamic elastic local buckling of piles under impact loads

A dynamic elastic local buckling analysis is presented for a pile subjected to an axial impact load. The pile is assumed to be geometrically perfect. The interactions between the pile and the surrounding soil are taken into account. The interactions include the normal pressure and skin friction on the surface of the pile due to the resistance of the soil. The analysis also includes the influence of the propagation of stress waves through the length of the pile to the distance at which buckling is initiated and the mass of the pile. A perturbation technique is used to determine the critical buckling length and the associated critical time. As a special case, the explicit expression for the buckling length of a pile is obtained without considering soil resistance and compared with the one obtained for a column by means of an alternative method. Numerical results obtained show good agreement with the experimental results. The effects of the normal pressure and the skin friction due to the surrounding soil, self-weight, stiffness and geometric dimension of the cross section on the critical buckling length are discussed. The sudden change of buckling modes is further considered to show the 'snap-through' phenomenon occurring as a result of stress wave propagation.