Shaking table tests on soil-structure interaction with caisson foundations
At Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, a recent master’s thesis by May Thu Moe investigated the dynamic response of a moment-resisting frame under earthquake loading using the shaking table of the Chair of Geotechnics.
Two conditions were examined: (a) fixed-base input motion and (b) soil–structure interaction with the frame embedded via caisson foundations in loose sand. The campaign combined physical shaking-table tests with numerical modelling employing numgeo.
Across both experiments and simulations, the amplification in the soil–structure interaction case was consistently higher than for the fixed-base assumption. In some tests, the acceleration response of the frame with soil–structure interaction was larger up to a factor of two.
The primary objective of the study is to develop an experimental database for validating numgeo in soil–structure interaction problems under earthquake loading.
Acknowledgement: We thank all contributors for their support in test planning, setup, and execution.
