Influence of Bracing Systems on Pile Design Parameters: A Structure–Soil–Pile Interaction Approach

Structural damages occurred during any earthquake arise not only from structural design flaw but also from the variability of sub-base soil behavior and the foundation system. For this reason, structure–soil–pile interaction has an important place in evaluating the behavior of a structure under dynamic effects. Bored pile application, which is one of the deep foundation systems, is a widely used method in the world to transfer the loads coming from the structure to the ground safely in problematic grounds. For this reason, in pile foundation system designs, how bored pile foundation systems will affect the structural design under earthquake loads is considered an important issue. In particular, how diagonally braced steel structures with piled raft foundation systems will behave under earthquake effects has been evaluated as a subject that needs to be examined. For this reason, this situation was evaluated as the main purpose of this study. The effect of the bored pile systems designed in different orientations on the behavior of diagonally braced steel structures during an earthquake under kinematic and inertial effects was investigated in detail within the scope of this study. Numerical analyses, based on data from shake table experiments on a scaled superstructure, examine various pile design scenarios. Experimental base shear force measurements informed the development of numerical scenarios, which varied pile lengths and inter-pile distances while maintaining constant pile diameters. This study analyzed the kinematic and inertial effects on the piles, offering insights into their structural behavior under seismic conditions. The increase in pile length and the increase in the distance between the piles caused a significant increase in the bending moment and shear force, which have an important place in pile design.