Common-Origin Approach to Assess Level-Ground Liquefaction Susceptibility and Triggering in CPT-Compatible Soils Using
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 7
Abstract
Current engineering practice employs clean sand–based procedures to evaluate liquefaction triggering in nonplastic, coarse-grained soils and low-plasticity, fine-grained soils below level or mildly-sloping ground. Furthermore, existing empirical liquefaction triggering procedures treat all clean sands (fines content ) as identical (i.e., employing a single liquefaction resistance boundary). To improve these practices, this paper presents a new common-origin method to assess level-ground liquefaction susceptibility and triggering for cone penetration test (CPT)–compatible soils ranging from nonsensitive clays to clean sands using the soil classification index (described elsewhere). This procedure was developed using 401 documented case records of liquefaction and nonliquefaction in clean sands, silty sands, sandy silts, and low-plasticity fine-grained soils combined into a single data set. Importantly, the proposed procedure implicitly couples the evaluation of liquefaction susceptibility and triggering and does not require estimating fines content or converting measured CPT tip resistance to an equivalent clean-sand value. Rather, the proposed procedure yields unique estimates of liquefaction resistance for soils based on compressibility (as reflected in ) such that factors that affect penetration resistance (e.g., mineralogy, grain shape, density, overconsolidation) are incorporated. The new deterministic and probabilistic procedures are illustrated using examples of liquefaction and no liquefaction in clean sands, silty sands to sandy silts, and low-plasticity fine-grained soils.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Some or all data, models, or code used during the study were provided by Prof. Johann Facciorusso. Direct request for these materials may be made to Prof. Facciorusso as indicated in the Acknowledgments.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the following individuals for their contributions to this work: Prof. Bret Lingwall for discussions related to universal liquefaction resistance concepts; Prof. Johann Facciorusso for sharing digital CPT data collected following the 2015 Emilia, Italy, earthquake; and Mr. Ryan Leigh for his initial compilation and review of CPT data. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which helped the authors improve the manuscript.
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Received: Apr 17, 2020
Accepted: Jan 13, 2021
Published online: May 6, 2021
Published in print: Jul 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Oct 6, 2021
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