November 6, 2018 Software Open Access

NHERI-SimCenter/PileGroupTool: Version 2.1

Peter Mackenzie-Helnwein; Pedro Arduino; Frank McKenna; Tatsuhiko Sweet

The official tool homepage for the PileGroupTool is here

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:

• Fixes a scaling bug where parameters were inaccessible on smaller displays
• Fixes an update bug when forces or applied displacements were changed using the up/down arrows in DoubleSpinBoxes
• Adds axis labels and units to the result plots
• Removes the "hints" section to better work on smaller displays
• adds a Quick Tips section and pop-up to the Help menu. This replaces and expands the removed hints section
• minor updates to the UI
• some minor performance updates internally.