Geotechnical Considerations and Soil-Structure Interaction: Proposed ASCE Standards for Seismic Design of Piers and Wharves

ASCE 7-05 sets the minimum life-safety standards for designing buildings and other structures. However, it does not directly address all of the issues designers typically face in the seismic design of piers and wharves, especially with respect to dealing with kinematic loading from permanent ground deformation. In 2005, ASCE's Codes and Standards Committee and Coastal, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute formed a formal Standards Committee to develop a national consensus standard for seismic design of pile supported piers and wharves. Within this Standards Committee, several Task Committees were formed to address various aspects of seismic design of piers and wharves. Task Committee 7 was charged with developing standards for the geotechnical and soil-structure interaction aspects pertaining to piers and wharves. In addition to recommending different levels of ground motions for different performance levels and importance categories of the structure, the ground motions per ASCE 7-05 are being adopted to maintain consistency with the minimum standards of this document. This paper discusses the efforts to develop the standards and commentaries for the ground motion, geotechnical, and soil-structure interaction aspects of the proposed standard, especially those that are unique to piers and wharves.