Numerical model for investigating seismic performance of Prestressed Hollow Concrete (PHC) piles with Fiber section element

In the medium to high seismic zone, prestressed hollow concrete (PHC) pile for structural foundation should be designed with elastic behavior due to low ductility and dissipated energy. However, some Indonesian practical engineer has chosen PHC pile for pile-supported slab viaduct (PSSV) with medium seismic moment-resisting frame concept in a high-risk earthquake zone. Therefore, some nonlinear numerical simulations of PSSV structure in medium to high seismic zone need to be conducted to investigate its seismic performance. In the initial stage, a numerical model for investigating the seismic performance of PHC pile under flexural test was conducted. By implementing an appropriate plastic hinge length of forced beam-column with hinge elements, the flexural behavior of PHC piles to be simulated under both monotonic and cyclic loading. The fiber section was adopted to accommodate non-linear behaviour of material in the PHC pile cross section. As the results, the skeleton curves, the sectional strain distributions, and the hysteresis curves have good agreement results compared with the experimental results. Furthermore, based on the equal damping ratio calculation of the hysteresis curve, the PHC pile only achieve low energy dissipation, though the ductility capacity around 3. Finally, this numerical model approach could be adopted in the non-linear simulation of PSSV structure under seismic load. © 2020 The Authors, published by EDP Sciences.