Hyperbolic Soil Modeling - A Long Overdue Improvement in Soil Modeling

Abstract

Abstract Whether performing pile driving simulations or analyzing pile driving records, the weakest link in the computer model is the soil. Even though computing capabilities have expanded exponentially in recent years, soil modeling often still relies on the same equations when pile driving simulation programs were first developed in the last century. A typical example of this fact is the use of the elastic-plastic soil model and this paper aims to show that that model can and should be replaced by a more accurate hyperbolic soil model to incorporate nonlinear soil behavior. The paper will reassess 4 cases where originally the elasto-plastic soil model was used (for both the pile driving simulation as well as the analysis of the pile driving records) by implementing a hyperbolic soil model. The outcomes for both models are then compared with each other and with the monitoring data during pile driving.