Elastic stage dynamic similarity law for soil-pile shaking table tests under horizontal excitation considering soil shear modulus error

The elastic stage similarity law constitutes the key basis for developing the full-process similarity law. This study proposes an elastic stage dynamic similarity law for soil-pile shaking table tests, which enables the quantitative prediction of prototype responses, including pile head acceleration, pile head displacement and pile bending moment, from model test results, even when there are errors in the dynamic shear modulus of model soil. Shaking table tests are conducted on soil-pile interaction models with scale ratios of 1:1, 1:2 and 1:4 to validate the proposed similarity law. All back-calculated responses show errors of less than 5%. Numerical simulation comparison with the artificial mass similarity law proves significant advantage of the proposed similarity law.