23 6 23(6)10011006

20043 Chinese Journal of Rock Mechanics and Engineering March2004

Received 19 Sep. 2003.
Cheng Y MMaleBorn in 1959PhDAssociate ProfessorDepartment of Civil and Structural EngineeringThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHong
KongChina. E-mailceymchen@polyu.edu.hk.



THICK PLATE ANALYSIS WITH
APPLICATION TO PILE CAP DESIGN

Cheng Y M
1
Zhang Y H
12

(
1
Department of Civil and Structural EngineeringThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHong KongChina)
(
2
Institute of Rock and Soil MechanicsThe Chinese Academy of Sciencess Wuhan 430071 China)

Abstract The thick plate is commonly used for the pile cap and the transfer plate, and a proper analysis of it can greatly
affect the cost of the thick plate. In actual practicesoft support condition is sometimes adopted by engineers for modeling
of thick plates. In this paperthe limitations of soft support in the determination of deflection and bending moment with
very thick plates are studied. The distribution of superstructure loadings to pile caps and piles is also carefully
investigated.
Key words thick platepile capsoft support
CLC number TU 472.99 Document code A Article ID 1000-6915(2004)06-1001-06


1 INTRODUCTION

For simple thin slabit can be analyzed as
one-way or two-way slab which will be good enough
for general design. For transfer plate or pile cap where
the thickness/span ratio is usually greater than 0.1the
simplified analysis will not be adequate and a refined
analysis is required. The proper technique to analyze a
thin slab structure is the plate analysis and the
governing equation for a Kirchhoff thin plate
[14]
is
given by
D
q
=
4
(1)
where q is the uniformly distributed load and D is
given by ) 1 ( 12 /
2 3
Et . In Eq.(1)that plane section
remains plane is used and the shear deformation is
neglected. The solution of Eq.(1) for simple geometry
is given by Fourier series or Naviers series solution. If
the thickness t of a plate relative to the span length
l is relatively large ) 1 . 0 / ( > l t shear deformation
will become noticeable and the classical thin plate
equation as given Eq.(1) will underestimate the
deformation of thick plate
[56]
. For thick platethe
Mindlin thick plate formulation is commonly used
and there are many types of thick plate element
developed
[616]
. For the classical Mindlin thick plate
elementthere are various numerical difficulties and
some of the important problems are
(1) Shear locking can occur for 1 point
integration scheme in Q4 bilinear element and
stabilization matrix has been proposed by Hughes
[67]

for this problem.
(2) For the classical Q4 bilinear element as
shown in Fig.1the author discovered that if a point
load is applied at point A while points BCDE are
restrained in vertical directionthe solution of the
vertical displacement by Q4 element is acceptable
while the solution of the rotations will experience
shear locking phenomenon for 14 or 9 points
1002 2004
integration scheme. That is to sayonly the vertical
displacement can be determined for this situation. The
authors have also discovered that shear locking for this
case can be avoided by simply adding extra grid lines
as shown by the dotted lines in Fig.1.


Fig.1 Shear locking in Q4 element

(3) Q8 quadratic element was also used for
improved accuracy and the main problem of this
element is shown in Fig.2. If point A and point C are
restrained while point B is not restrainedshear
locking will occur. That is to sayany restraint to Q8
element can only be applied to a single corner or the
side constituted by ABC. More care is required in the
design of a suitable mesh for complicated real problem
if Q8 element is used. Q8 element is hence more
popular in research but is less popular in ordinary
analysis and design.













Fig.2 Shear locking in Q8 element

Since the classical Mindlin thick plate element is
less satisfactory for thick plate analysis of complicated
problemsnew 3 nodes or 4 nodes elements which can
provide higher accuracy in analysis are still under
active development at present
[671011]
. For thin plate
analysisthe only variable in the governing equation is
the vertical deflection and rotations are given by
simple derivative of the deflection. For thick platethe
rotations are formulated as independent variables
hence the treatment of boundary condition has to
be considered carefully. In actual practicesome
engineers adopt soft support condition in the analysis
of thick plate. Soft support condition is acceptable for
thin plate but is not applicable for thick plate analysis.
The author has compared this practice with some
published rigorous solution and the thin/thick plate
program PLATE developed by the author. There are
several major limitations of the soft support condition
as following.
(1) The bending moment and deflection are
usually over-estimated and the situation becomes
serious if l t / approaches 0.3.
(2) There are great errors in the determination of
shear force.

2

STUDY ON THE BENDING
MOMENT AND DEFLECTION
OF THIN/THICK PLATE

In the present studya square plate simply
supported on four sides and loaded with UDL is
considered. Any plate element that is adopted for
analysis should be able to pass through such a simple
test with satisfaction. The author would like to
emphasize that for a line support along edgethe
rotation along the line should be restrained to 0 as well.
The numerical results by IB element with soft support
condition (using a commercial program)PLATE and
the rigorous solutions are all based on this condition.
The maximum deflection and moment are located
at the center of the plate and the results of analysis are
shown in Fig.3 and 4. The deflection is normalized
with the term D ql 100 /
4
while the bending moment
is normalized with the term 10 /
2
ql and the
coefficients are used for comparisons. For thick plate
analysisthe deflection coefficient is a function of l t /
while it is a constant for thin plate solution. From
Fig.3it is observed that the error by IB element is
generally small for 1 . 0 / < l t but increases rapidly
A
B
C
23 6 Cheng Y Met al. Thick Plate Analysis with Application to Pile Cap Design 1003
beyond this ratio. The results by PLATE are very close
to the rigorous solution for very thin to very thick
condition. It is also noticed that the results by 8 8
elements are very close to that by 128 128 elements
for both IB element with soft support and PLATE
which indicates that a relatively coarse mesh is
sufficient for analysis if only the deflection is
required.


Fig.3 Deflection coefficient at center of plate vs. t/l for
simply-supported plate subjected to UDL


Fig.4 Moment coefficient at center of plate vs. t/l for
simply-supported plate subjected to UDL

For the center bending moment in this casethe
bending moment coefficient is independent of the ratio
l t / . For the bending moment coefficients which are
shown in Fig.4it is noticed that there are noticeable
differences between a mesh of 8 8 and a mesh of
128 128 for IB element. This phenomenon is not
surprising as the determination of the bending moment
requires differentiation of the deflection. For an
accurate determination of the bending momenta finer
mesh is required as compared with that for deflection
determination. The errors by soft support for a mesh of
8 8 are relatively large and some improvements can
be achieved by using a finer mesh of 128 128
elements. For l t / less than 0.1the error in the
moment coefficient by soft support using a mesh of
128 128 is small and acceptable but this error
increases rapidly with l t / . In factfor = l t / 0.3soft
support over-estimates the bending moment by 12%
and this ratio cannot be further reduced even with
mesh refinement!
The performance of soft support in determining
the bending moment and deflection with mesh
refinement is another interesting phenomenon. As
shown in Fig.5 and 6the performance of soft support
is not satisfactory and mesh refinement cannot reduce
the errors of the analysis if l t / is greater than 0.1.
There is also an interesting phenomenon in Fig.6. For
a mesh of 2 2 at l t / ratio= 0.3the bending
moment coefficient from soft support is very good
even though the deflection coefficient is not good. For
such a coarse meshthe technique in recovering the
nodal forces has a great influence on the results. The
author has tried several different nodal forces
recovering techniques on PLATE and an error ranging
from 7.6% to 67% can be obtained. The author
suspected that the error in the nodal forces recovering
technique has partly compensated the error in the IB
analysis for this case so that a very good result is
obtained. This explanation can further be supported by
the fact that the errors for the bending moment of a
4 4 mesh is greater than that for a mesh of 2 2
which contradicts the behavior of finite element. The
corresponding results by PLATE are monotonic
behavior with increasing mesh size and the errors are
small if a reasonable mesh is used. Once againthe
solutions by soft support cannot be improved simply
by mesh refinement.
In conclusionthe bending moment and deflec-
tion from soft support analysis are generally over-
estimated and the errors increase rapidly with l t / .
Mesh refinement can only slightly reduce the error but
the effect is small. It is clear that IB element cannot
1004 2004


Fig.5 Deflection coefficient at center of plate vs. number of elements (log scale) for simply-supported plate subjected to UDL


Fig.6 Moment coefficient at center of plate vs. number of elements (log scale) for simply-supported plate subjected to UDL.

converge to the rigorous solution even with mesh
refinement and this is the fundamental limitation of
this element. For a thick plate with = l t / 0.3 which is
common for many pile cap or some transfer plate in
Hong Kongappreciable saving can be achieved if a
more rigorous analysis is adopted.

3 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF
PILE CAP

Pile cap is an expensive item in construction and
there is a strong need to reduce the cost of pile cap
among many engineerings in Hong Kong. In the
present studya 1 m thick 4 m4 m pile cap
supporting two 2 m long shear walls is analyzed and
the layout of the pile cap is shown in Fig.7. For the
two shear wallsthe loadings on each wall are that
distributed load =4 000 kN/mand in-plane moment
M
x
=2 000 kNm
For in-plane momentthe moment is transformed
to equivalent point loads automatically by plate which
is also the current practice for modeling of in-plane
23 6 Cheng Y Met al. Thick Plate Analysis with Application to Pile Cap Design 1005

x / m
Fig.7 Layout of piles in pile cap with 2 shear wall

moment in Hong Kong. The Youngs modulus and
Poisson ratio of concrete are taken as 2.510
7
kN/m
2

and 0.2 respectively.
This pile cap is supported by 9 bore piles with
small diameter 0.6 m and length of 15 m. The soil
parameters are E
s
=25 000 kPa and =0.2. The piles
are assumed to be affected each other by the ring shear
theory (after Randolph) so that a coupling analysis is
performed. A full stiffness matrix has to be solved in
this coupling analysis. Soil beneath the pile cap is
commonly assumed to take up no loading but a
Winklers spring of 25 000 kN/m
3
is assumed in the
present study. The maximum and minimum pile load
in pile cap using coupling analysis is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Maximum and minimum pile load in pile cap
using coupling analysis





kNm/m
Condition Max. load Min. load
With soil support 2 598 426
Without soil support 3 309 318

In this simple examplethe pile cap has taken up
appreciable loadings from superstructure even though
K
s
is not great. That meansthe soil support
underneath the pile cap is effective in reducing the pile
load and hence the cost of construction. The soil
bearing pressure is determined and is shown in Fig.8.
If the bore piles are very largethe contribution of the
pile cap base may be negligible but noticeable saving
can be achieved for general problems if the base
pressure from soil is considered in pile cap analysis
and design.


x / m
Fig.8 Base pressure on pile cap due to soil

4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

For a proper thick plate analysis of pile cap the
author suggests that the size of the element used in
analysis should not exceed 5% of the domain size in
order to determine the deflection and moment with
good accuracy. The author discovered that there are
many limitations in the soft support which is
sometimes adopted for analysis in Hong Kong. In
factmany engineers use thin plate option to model
thick plate by commercial program as the treatment of
boundary condition for general shape thick plate is
relatively difficult. In the design of PLATE for
research and teachingthis problem has been solved
effectively and a demonstration copy of PLATE can be
obtained at http//www.cse.polyu.edu.hk/ceymcheng/.
For soft supportbending moment is usually
over-estimated (there are isolated cases where the
moment is under-estimated) and noticeable saving can
be achieved if more rigorous analysis based on
modern thick plate elements are used. From limited
case studythe author has found that the use of
classical thin plate element (available in many finite
element programs) for thick plate problem can
actually give better shear force as compared with the
soft support thick plate formulation. If soft support
condition is used in the analysisthe moment from the
analysis may still be acceptable while the shear force
should be computed using thin plate analysis.
y
/
m

y
/
m

1006 2004
Reduction of the cost of construction is
particularly important in time of recession. Since
transfer plate and pile cap are expensive construction
itemsengineers should exercise their knowledge and
judgment in the analysis. By performing a more
realistic modeling of the problemappreciable saving
in the cost can be achieved. The cumulative effects of
more rigorous and more realistic analysis can be
beneficial in providing a better and more economic
solution. It should be emphasized that reduction of
internal forces means reducing unnecessary waste
instead of reducing the safety of the structure. Factor
of safety should not rely on over-design of the
structure.

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