DUCTILITY ASSESSMENT OF REINFORCED CONCRETE PILE-TO-PILE CAP CONNECTIONS IN APPLICATION
Abstract
Ground motion occurred during moderate seismic event causes pile-to-pile cap connections producing a large
curvature demand and a plastic hinge at the pile head. Severity damage along the pile is controlled by limiting the
curvature ductility demand in the potential plastic hinge region of the pile. The strength and stiffness of the soil-pile
interaction and the equivalent plastic hinge length of the pile directly quantify the curvature ductility demand of fixed
pile-to-pile cap connection. A routine that incorporates the limit state analysis based on the kinematic model and the
moment-curvature analysis was developed to calculate the displacement ductility factor to the local curvature ductility
demand. A fixed-head pile-to-pile cap connection embedded in cohesive and cohesionless soils was studied. The result
shows that the first plastic hinges for both soil conditions occur at the interface of fixed-head pile connection. The
ductility assessment demonstrates that curvature ductility demands for the fixed-head pile embedded in cohesive soil is
higher compared to the pile embedded in cohesionless soil providing a different location of the second plastic hinges.