May 15, 2018 Software Open Access

PileGroupTool

Peter Mackenzie-Helnwein; Frank McKenna; Pedro Arduino; Alborz Ghofani; Maxwell Rutman; Tatsuhiko Sweet

The SimCenter Pile-Group Tool provides a dynamic interface to study the behavior of a pile or pile-group in layered soil. It allows the user to interactively (and nearly instantly) observe the system's response to changes of the following parameters:

• soil structure (up to 3 layers of variable thickness) and soil properties
• position of the ground water table
• pile stiffness, embedment length, connection type to the pile cap
• number of piles in the group (one to three piles)
• the applied horizontal force at the pile cap (push-over analysis)

Presented results include:

• lateral displacement of all piles
• moment and shear diagrams for each
• vertical soil stresses
• ultimate strength and stiffness parameters for the employed p-y springs

New in this release:

• extension to lateral and axial loads, as well as moment on pile cap
• push-over and pull-out analysis
• lateral spreading/liquefaction analysis through quasi-static soil motion profile
• additional results plots: axial load and displacement, t-z spring parameters
• save to and load from file (JSON)
• export OpenSees source file for current system and loads
• switch from QCP to Qwt
• switch from GPL3 to BSD license
• performance enhancements for a more fluent user experience