A seismic performance-based design approach for slope stabilizing piles

Piles have been used to increase the stability of landslides in static regime for many decades, as they provide resistance against a laterally moving soil mass by transferring the loads into more stable underlying ground. Nevertheless, the presence of such a reinforcement has beneficial effects even under seismic shaking. The paper aims at proposing a simple procedure for the estimation of permanent displacements of slopes stabilized with piles. The method is made up of 3 different stages: (a) evaluation of stability conditions of the natural slope and the ultimate load offered by the piles; (b) combination of the two ingredients above, through limit equilibrium considerations, to assess the critical acceleration of the reinforced slope; (c) use of the classical Newmark method to calculate the permanent displacement under specified input motions. A parametric study is also performed to quantify the beneficial effect of piles under earthquake shaking.