Use of Plastic Hinge Model in Nonlinear Pushover Analysis of a Pile

The capacity of a pile-soil system can be obtained by pushover analysis using the beam-on-nonlinear-Winkler foundation model. When the pile section enters the plastic state, the plastic hinge method is usually adopted to model its postyielding flexural behavior. The propagation of the plastic zone in a pile can be traced using a series of plastic hinges distributed along the pile that is embedded in the soil. This study proposes a proper model for arranging the distributed plastic hinges along the depths of the pile that are prone to yielding. A modified definition of plastic curvature is proposed herein in order to correctly simulate the nonlinear flexural behavior of a pile. Examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed model.