A widely used approach in practice for modeling the seismic response of pile supported structures is Beam on Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF). In this approach, the nonlinear p-y curves, recommended by the American Petroleum Institute (API), are used as the backbone curves for the lateral load-deformation relationships. In this paper, the efficiency of these curves for seismic analysis of soil-pile interaction is investigated. For this purpose, recorded results of four centrifuge tests conducted on single pile foundations are compared with the computed results based on the BNWF approach employing the API p-y curves. The prediction of the seismic response based on the API p-y curves was found to be poor in the cases studied here.
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