A physical model for investigating rocking responses of piled foundations

The foundational rocking mechanism dissipates the transmitted earthquake energy to superstructure because of plastic hinges formation within the soil bed. However, there are some concerns using this design approach, such as undesired residual rotations or settlements that may cause the serviceability of the structure at risk. Nevertheless, there are several methods to control the weak points of rocking behavior of footings, namely, reinforcing the bed soils by geo synthetics or geo-grids, densifying it, or using piled foundations. Piled foundations’ rocking behavior can be studied experimentally using centrifuge and small-scale physical mode in the laboratory or large-scale testing in the field. In the present study, a developed small-scale physical model for studying rocking behavior of piled foundations is introduced. The soil bed preparation is done using the raining technique and then some typical results of the experiments, such as moment-rotation and settlement-rotation curves, are also presented. The model possesses the ability of performing a parametric study with various pile lengths, soil densities, and factor of safeties. Moreover, different types of superstructure-pile connections can be modeled and investigated through the device.