Practical boundary element method for piled rafts.

Abstract In this paper, a practical boundary element method (BEM) is developed to analyze piled rafts. The raft is modeled using the direct boundary element formulation for thick plates; which is suitable for such type of problems. An innovative methodology to add stiffness matrices to the plate integral equations is developed. Hence, pile–soil–raft interactions are added as a special case of the developed methodology. In order to avoid generating huge systems of coupled equations, an effective condensation technique of piles and soil degrees of freedom (DOFs) at pile–soil–raft interface is employed. Several numerical examples are presented and results are compared to previously published results. Then, a practical application is solved to demonstrate the strength and versatility of the proposed formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]