INTERACTION OF PILES GROUP WITH REVERSE FAULT RUPTURE

In many large magnitude earthquakes, the causative fault propagates all the way up through the soil and interacts with surface structures. Over the last four decades, earthquake engineering research and practice have emphasized the dynamic response of soil and structural systems to ground oscillations. Even so, recent strong earthquakes (i.e. the 1999 Chi-Chi Taiwan earthquake and the Landers 1992 California earthquake) have caused major collapse to structures from surface fault ruptures. Previous research has not concentrated on studying the response of soil-structure systems to large displacements induced by surface fault ruptures. Although piles are usually used for protecting structures by reducing total and dierential settlements, they are not an acceptable treatment in supporting structures from surface fault rupture. Previous research has shown that piles usually follow fault rupture deformation and transfer it to the structure. Therefore, this behavior is a reason for the unsuitable performance of a piles group against fault rupture. In order to study the interaction of the soil and the piles group during reverse fault rupture carefully, in the rst step, the propagation of fault rupture in free eld is modeled. For this purpose, a 2D numerical model is veried by reduced-scale experiment results. In the numerical models, a nonlinear nite element method, using an elastoplastic constitutive model with Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion and isotropic strain softening characteristics, is used. For the main analysis, the eects of the presence of a piles group on top of the outcropping fault are simulated. The analysis results indicate that the presence of the piles group slightly modi es the fault rupture path.