Transient analysis of piles and pile groups in non-homogeneous soil

In this paper, the transient analysis of a single pile and a 3 × 3 pile group is presented for Gibson type non-homogeneous soil by using a hybrid type of boundary and finite element formulation for the soil domain and pile domain, respectively. The formula is presented for a transient point force acting in the interior of a non-homogeneous, isotropic half space. A time stepping boundary element algorithm for soil domain is used together with an implicit time integration scheme for finite pile domain. To investigate the validity of this formulation, a single pile and a pile group are analyzed under Heaviside loading and triangular transient loading. In the analyses, it can be concluded that the results agree well for all cases of the inhomogeneity index by comparing the Laplace domain solutions.