Seismic Performance of Precast Prestressed Concrete Piles

Abstract

ATC3‐06 placed strict limitations on the use of precast prestressed concrete piles in severe seismic regions. Two reasons contributing to the decision were the poor level of understanding of the curvature capacity of such piles and the magnitude of the curvatures which are likely to be imposed on them by a moderate to severe earthquake. This paper describes full‐scale physical experiments to study the former and computer calculations to study the latter. The writers conclude that prestressed concrete piles containing modest amounts of spiral reinforcement should give satisfactory performance in the vast majority of applications on the west coast of the United States, and that the analysis of soil‐pile interaction described here is a useful tool for the design of pile foundations in seismic regions.