Shear Wave Velocity-Based Approach for Predicting Liquefaction of the Gravel Soils

Abstract eng:
Although the in-situ shear wave velocity tests have been used commonly as engineering testing techniques and shear wave velocity V s has gradually become a basic index for soil liquefaction evaluation, the in-situ V s -based liquefaction assessment methods for gravelly soils are not available so far. The gravelly soils here refers to the coarse-grained soils with the gravel contents from 0% to 100% including the gravelly sand, the gravelly soil, silty gravelly soil, sandy gravel soil and gravel soil. The significant phenomena of liquefaction for the gravelly soils in the M s 8.0 Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008 are found and the in-situ V s structures for 45 sites in the event are obtained. In terms of the investigation data, the V s -based approach for liquefaction prediction of the gravelly soils is presented. The liquefaction prediction of the gravelly soils can be divided into the two steps: the preliminary evaluation and further evaluation. In the preliminary step the geological ages and the buried condition of gravelly soils layers are considered. The parameters including seismic intensity, groundwater table, depth of the gravelly soils and the in-situ shear wave velocity of gravelly soils are concerned in the further step. In the formulation of the method, the influential coefficients of the gravelly soils depths and groundwater levels are deduced by normalization method and optimization method respectively. As the relative densities between the gravelly soils and the sandy soils even for the same V s value are different the methods of liquefaction evaluation for sandy soils are not suitable for the gravelly soils. If the existing liquefaction assessment procedures for sandy soils are employed, the liquefaction resistance of the gravelly soils will be significantly overestimated.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket