Assessment of soil liquefaction incorporating earthquake characteristics

This paper investigates the effect of nature of the earthquake on the assessment of liquefaction potential of a soil deposit during earthquake loading. Here, the nature of the earthquake is included via the parameter V, the ‘pseudo-velocity’, that is the gross area under the acceleration record of the earthquake at any depth below the ground surface. By analysing a number of earthquake records from different parts of the world, a simple method has been outlined to assess the liquefaction potential of a soil deposit based on the pseudo-velocity. For many earthquakes occurred in the past, acceleration records are available or can be computed at the ground level or some other depth below the ground surface. Therefore, this method is a useful tool at the preliminary design stage to determine the liquefaction potential before going into a detailed analysis. Validation of the method is carried out using a database of case histories consisting of standard penetration test values, acceleration records at the ground surface and field observations of liquefaction/non-liquefaction. It can be seen that the proposed method has the ability to predict soil liquefaction potential accurately, despite its simplicity.