Location

San Diego, California

Presentation Date

27 May 2010, 4:30 pm - 6:20 pm

Abstract

Liquefaction of water saturated granular soils is one of the major risks that affect the safety and post-earthquake performance of infrastructure such as bridges, dams, buildings, and lifelines in various parts of the world. The seismically induced ground deformations are often the main concern when liquefaction occurs in significant zones of an earth structure or soil foundation. Recent studies including field data, centrifuge model testing and numerical investigations indicate that large lateral spreads and flow-slides in gentle sandy slopes have taken place when a low permeability silt/clay layer (hydraulic barrier) is present. One of the promising measures to alleviate this barrier effect and ground failures is seismic drains. Currently the effects of seismic drain configuration in plan are well understood and established in the engineering profession. However, most drain improvement schemes comprise of seismic drains that fully penetrate the liquefied soil layer. This paper describes the results of a coupled stress-flow dynamic analysis to investigate the enhancement effect of drain depth on deformations of liquefied slopes with barrier sub-layer. This study showed that drains that fully penetrate the liquefiable depth do not provide the lowest deformations and as a result may not provide the optimum solution.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Meeting Name

5th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Document Version

Final Version

Rights

© 2010 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

File Type

text

Language

English

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Optimum Depth of Seismic Drains for Mitigating Large Deformations in Liquefied Ground with Hydraulic Barrier

San Diego, California

Liquefaction of water saturated granular soils is one of the major risks that affect the safety and post-earthquake performance of infrastructure such as bridges, dams, buildings, and lifelines in various parts of the world. The seismically induced ground deformations are often the main concern when liquefaction occurs in significant zones of an earth structure or soil foundation. Recent studies including field data, centrifuge model testing and numerical investigations indicate that large lateral spreads and flow-slides in gentle sandy slopes have taken place when a low permeability silt/clay layer (hydraulic barrier) is present. One of the promising measures to alleviate this barrier effect and ground failures is seismic drains. Currently the effects of seismic drain configuration in plan are well understood and established in the engineering profession. However, most drain improvement schemes comprise of seismic drains that fully penetrate the liquefied soil layer. This paper describes the results of a coupled stress-flow dynamic analysis to investigate the enhancement effect of drain depth on deformations of liquefied slopes with barrier sub-layer. This study showed that drains that fully penetrate the liquefiable depth do not provide the lowest deformations and as a result may not provide the optimum solution.