Shaking table tests on slope reinforced by anchored piles under random earthquake ground motions

Many studies have reported that the seismic responses of slopes and retaining structures are notably different under the effect of multiple seismic waves. Previous experimental studies on slopes have commonly used one or several typical seismic records with different peak ground accelerations as the input, while ignoring the randomness of seismic ground motions. This study used shaking table tests to investigate the stochastic seismic responses of a slope reinforced by an anchored pile structure. First, a stochastic ground motion model was adopted to generate a suite of random ground motions, which were then used as the input of shaking table tests. Then, probabilistic methods, kernel density estimation and the probability density evolution method, were used to quantify the effect of earthquake uncertainty on the seismic responses of the system in terms of the mean, standard deviation, evolutionary characteristics of the probability density functions, and dynamic reliability. The stochastic seismic responses of the model under random excitation were investigated in terms of the acceleration response, amplification effect, and dynamic earth pressure. The results demonstrate that the seismic responses of a slope have marked variability under stochastic excitation. A more reliable assessment result can be obtained by using probabilistic methods to quantify the seismic response of the slopes.