I am a very new user of Plaxis 3D. I am trying to model a laterally loaded pile. In the Plaxis Tutorial manual there is an example of loading of a suction pile in which the pile is modelled as a rigid body but no material or thickness of pile is assigned to it. Is it not necessary to assign material?. And also how to choose the reference points for the rigid body?. All answers are welcome.
Dear Rakshith,
A suction pile is a hollow steel pile, so for this reason the thickness is considered to be much smaller in comparison with the model size and therefore can be excluded by simplification (modelling purposes).
The reference point can be edited in the Selection explorer (or Model explorer) when checking the Rigid body object. The reference point of a rigid body can be an arbitrary point (independent from existing geometry points), defined by its three coordinates (x y z). Upon mesh generation, this point will NOT appear as a mesh node.However, during calculations, the reference point is associated with six independent degrees-of-freedom (ux, uy,uz, φx, φy, φz) and six corresponding force components (Fx, Fy, Fz, Mx, My, Mz) in the global system of equations.
For more information please check our Reference manual.
Thank You Stefanos Papavasileiou for the reply. I am a PG student and am trying to analyse a laterally loaded monopile in Plaxis 3D. Could you please tell me which would be the best fit to model a laterally loaded monopile? either using an embedded beam or using rigid body or other?. I tried analysing using both embedded beam and rigid body but couldn't validate my model. Is there any example or tutorial specific to laterally loaded piles or offshore monopile?. It would be very helpful. Thank You.
Typically the diameter of these piles is large enough to require using a rigid body via a surface or volume.
Currently, we have the tutorial example you found that is about a suction pile in different loading angles (30º to 60º):communities.bentley.com/.../plaxis-3d-tutorial-03-loading-of-a-suction-pile