Easy to Use Empirical Correlations for Liquefaction and No Liquefaction Conditions

Considerable damages during an earthquake (EQ) are the consequence of in situ soil losing its shear strength which is popularly known as liquefaction. A number of methodologies are available to quantify the safety of a site against liquefaction occurrence. Widely accepted recent methodologies follow iterative process making it cumbersome for the field engineer. In the present work, empirical correlations are proposed in accordance with widely accepted methodology, analysing the effect of various parameters such as overburden pressure, fines content (FC), factor of safety (FOS) etc. These proposed correlations are easy to use for the designers and the field engineers to determine the liquefaction potential of a site. Considering data from 207 global sites, proposed correlations are validated by comparing with standard methodology. Three different graphical validations are presented supporting that the results based on the proposed correlations are closely matching with the standard methodology. In case a site is found susceptible to liquefaction, so far no correlations are available to determine the shear strength required to be achieved after ground improvement which will ensure no liquefaction during future EQ. Proposed correlations in this work can also be used easily to determine improved shear strength required for a known FOS, FC and EQ magnitude (M) from ground improvement. Two flowcharts explaining the use of proposed correlations to determine FOS of a site and improvement shear strength required for a liquefied site from ground improvement respectively are developed in this work. Based on the second flowchart, determination of shear strength required from ground improvement are done for 45 random sites out of 207 liquefied sites during worldwide EQ in this work.