Location

San Diego, California

Presentation Date

30 Mar 2001, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Abstract

Recent earthquakes have highlighted many seismic hazard concerns for western U.S. ports. Port waterfront structures are commonly constructed utilizing pile-supported wharves in combination with rock dike structures retaining a hydraulically placed backfill. Seismic damage is generally attributed to weak soils that are often prevalent in the marine environment (e.g. liquefiable sands, sensitive cohesive soils). In response to past damage, many ports are instigating soil improvement strategies to eliminate or minimize potential occurrences of liquefaction and to increase the strength of cohesive soils. The design of a seismically resilient wharf requires an understanding of its performance during design level earthquakes. Due to the complex nature of pile-supported wharves, state-of-the-art centrifuge modeling techniques are being used to better understand their seismic performance. The authors used the large-scale centrifuge facility at the University of California at Davis. This paper presents details on the construction, instrumentation, and testing of the models. Results from the tests are also included, such as the seismic pile behavior, effect of soil improvement, and the overall behavior.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Meeting Name

4th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Document Version

Final Version

Rights

© 2001 University of Missouri--Rolla, 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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Mar 26th, 12:00 AM Mar 31st, 12:00 AM

Centrifuge Modeling of Pile-Supported Wharves for Seismic Hazards

San Diego, California

Recent earthquakes have highlighted many seismic hazard concerns for western U.S. ports. Port waterfront structures are commonly constructed utilizing pile-supported wharves in combination with rock dike structures retaining a hydraulically placed backfill. Seismic damage is generally attributed to weak soils that are often prevalent in the marine environment (e.g. liquefiable sands, sensitive cohesive soils). In response to past damage, many ports are instigating soil improvement strategies to eliminate or minimize potential occurrences of liquefaction and to increase the strength of cohesive soils. The design of a seismically resilient wharf requires an understanding of its performance during design level earthquakes. Due to the complex nature of pile-supported wharves, state-of-the-art centrifuge modeling techniques are being used to better understand their seismic performance. The authors used the large-scale centrifuge facility at the University of California at Davis. This paper presents details on the construction, instrumentation, and testing of the models. Results from the tests are also included, such as the seismic pile behavior, effect of soil improvement, and the overall behavior.