A Numerical Method to Integrate Duration-of-load and Biological Deterioration for Long-standing Timber Piles
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Timber stems were frequently utilized in soft-soil foundations before the widespread use of steel and concrete. Many historical European cities still heavily rely on the infrastructure supported by their original timber foundations. For such long-standing timber piles, the duration-of-load (DOL) behaviour of wood [1] is inevitable and should be considered in the assessment of residual service life. However, depending on the specific environmental conditions associated with the timber pile, various deterioration processes may interact and accelerate the damaging process [2]. In this work, we considered a simplified biological decay model and proposed a numerical framework to assess the safety level and remaining service life of long-standing timber piles under the influence of biological decay. Herein, two different approaches were proposed and compared: one considered the average effect of biological decay over the entire cross section, and the other took into account the local failure caused by biological decay and applied element deletion to allow stress redistribution. The analysis demonstrated a strong mesh-size and mesh-type dependency. However, both approaches captured the significant reduction of service life due to the incorporation of biological decay.
