Bibliometric and Knowledge Network of Global Research on Pile Foundations: A Review of Recent Developments

Abstract

Foundation on soft soil has always been a challenge for civil engineers, Pile foundation is by far the most suitable and comprehensive idea for construction on soft soil. In the present study, we produce a comprehensive overview of Pile foundation research from 1992 to 2021 by making use of bibliometric analysis. This study is conducted based on the Web of Science Core Collection Database. The Web of Science, MS Excel, and VOS viewer software are used for bibliometric analysis and science mapping. A database of 4803 publications has been retrieved. The analysis results show that People R China has yielded the greatest number of publications. In geographical terms, more than 50% of research is done by Asian countries. People R China and USA have the highest collaboration. Studies in this period are focusing on key factors associated with pile foundations such as Soil structure interaction, Pile group, Settlement, Liquefaction, Bearing Capacity etc. as suggested by the keywords analyzed in these publications. Analysis of the most cited articles in the field of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering reveals that the research area has gone vast from analyzing axial behavior and strength of pile foundations to analyzing seismic responses, further moving to sustainable structure and artificial intelligence applications in the concerned field in the last 30 years.