Huaca de la Luna is a monumental earthen complex near Trujillo, Peru built by the Moche civilization from 200 to 850 C.E. Its principal structure, a stepped pyramid constructed with millions of adobe bricks on sloping bedrock and sandy soil, presents severe structural damage at the northwest corner. A sensitivity study of the static and dynamic response of the pyramid is conducted in Abaqus/CAE Explicit using 2D and 3D nonlinear finite element models derived from archaeological, material, and geotechnical data. Concrete damaged plasticity and Mohr-Coulomb formulations are adopted to represent adobe and sandy soil, respectively. Models undergo quasi-static gravitational loading followed by dynamic application of lateral ground accelerations. Lateral capacity is defined as the applied acceleration that produces collapse and is identified from the time-evolution of elastic strain and plastic dissipation energies. Initial 2D sensitivity analysis investigates the effect on lateral capacity of adobe tensile strength, bedrock/soil configuration, west fa & ccedil;ade profile, eastward architecture, and plastic dilation angle. Critical configurations identified from 2D analysis are expanded into 3D models. All results show stability under gravitational load. At dynamically induced failure, damage corresponds closely to the extant collapse of the northwest corner of the pyramid, suggesting that present damage is due to seismic activity.

This paper proposes a new method for computing the undrained lateral capacity of Reinforced Concrete (RC) piles in cohesive soils, overcoming inherent conservativeness of classical Broms' theory. The proposed method relies on a new theoretical distribution for the limiting soil resistance, simple enough to derive closed-form solutions of the undrained lateral capacity, for different restraints at the pile head and for all possible failure mechanisms. After validation against numerical results and experimental data, the model is used to compute the failure envelope of RC piles under generalised loading. 3D FE analyses are used as benchmark to identify the main factors governing the ultimate response of RC piles. To this purpose, the Concrete Damaged Plasticity model is adopted to reproduce nonlinear concrete behaviour, which is an essential ingredient when modelling pile behaviour under horizontal loading. FE analyses show that, contrary to what observed for rigid and elastic piles, the ultimate response of RC piles relies on the soil strength mobilised at shallow depths, where the normalised lateral soil resistance basically depends on the sole adhesion factor. The proposed solutions are readily applicable to the design of single piles, as well as to the computation of three-dimensional interaction domains of pile groups.

Zhuanyao dwellings faced significant seismic risks in rural regions of China. Therefore, a shaking-table test was performed to explore the seismic performance of Zhuanyaos and validate the finite-element simulation results. The results showed that the damage to the pier and roof levels of Zhuanyaos was more severe after earthquakes, resulting in a noteworthy increase in the displacement responses of these two levels compared to that of the vault level. The damage to the front structure (Yaolian) and mid-pier of the Zhuanyao were more severe than the damage to the back wall and side pier, respectively, which caused a significant reduction in acceleration responses of Yaolian and mid-pier. Following the crack development, dynamic response, and field investigation, three typical collapse modes of Zhuanyaos were presented. Subsequently, the parametric analysis was conducted using a verified finite-element simulation method. The results show that using the catenary arch can reduce earthquake damage in Zhuanyaos. Increasing the width of the middle pier can improve the seismic performance of Zhuanyaos to a certain extent; however, it may exacerbate local damage to the structure. Besides, the high seismic vulnerability of Zhuanyaos stemming from an increasing thickness of overlying soil cannot be ignored.