Dynamic Response of Saturated Dense Sand in Laminated Centrifuge Container
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 131, Issue 5
Abstract
A highly instrumented centrifuge experiment was conducted at the Univ. of California at Davis, to investigate the seismic response of a saturated dense sand stratum. Nevada sand at about 100% relative density was employed in a laminated (flexible shear beam) container to simulate one-dimensional site response. Among the total of 27 imparted earthquake-like shaking events, peak accelerations near ground surface ranged from 0.03 to (in prototype scale), covering linear to highly nonlinear scenarios. This comprehensive set of recorded downhole accelerations is utilized herein to identify variation of shear modulus and damping ratio with shear strain amplitude. The estimated modulus reduction and damping ratio display a confinement dependence. At shear strains below about 0.2%, modulus variation is found in reasonable agreement with the formulae of Hardin–Drnevich and the modulus reduction bounds of Seed–Idriss, while damping is generally higher. At shear strains larger than 0.2%, the shear-induced dilation tendency maintained secant shear modulus at about 20% of its initial value, with a 20% damping ratio approximately. In earlier laboratory experimental studies on loose to medium-dense sands, Vucetic and Matasovic also reported similar trends. Based on the findings, a two-phase (solid and fluid) fully coupled nonlinear finite element program is calibrated and used to conduct numerical simulations of representative weak to strong shaking events. The computational results are in good agreement with the recorded counterparts, and satisfactorily reproduce the important dilation effects.
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Acknowledgments
The centrifuge model tests were performed at U.C. Davis by Mr. David Stevens (Kleinfelder and Associates) with the assistance of Mr. Byoung-Ill Kim (Myong-Ji University). Mr. James Linjun Yan (U.C. San Diego) and Mr. Garrett Mifsud (California Polytechnic Institute) helped with conducting some of the numerical simulations. Support for this research was provided by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) under Award Nos. 99HQGR0019 and 99HQGR0020 (John D. Unger, Manager), and by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center under Grant No. EEC-9701568 from the National Science Foundation. Partial University of California support (Multi-Campus Research Incentive Fund, MRIF) was provided to initiate this research. This support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 131 • Issue 5 • May 2005
Pages: 598 - 609
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 7, 2003
Accepted: Aug 20, 2004
Published online: May 1, 2005
Published in print: May 2005
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