Energy-Based Assessment of Liquefaction Resistance of Rooted Soil
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 148, Issue 1
Abstract
Plant roots have been shown to improve the soil resistance to liquefaction upon cyclic loading. However, the effect of roots and their orientations on any changes in soil anisotropy and the mechanisms of dissipated energy involved at liquefaction state are not clear. This study applied the energy-based method to evaluate the liquefaction behavior of rooted soils of varying root volume ratios (RVRs). Results of 12 undrained cyclic triaxial tests on rooted soils published in the literature were reinterpreted under this energy framework. The assessment showed that the normalized cumulative dissipated energy (, where is the effective confining pressure) of rooted soil at liquefaction state can be related to the cyclic resistance ratio at 15 cycles (). It was discovered that roots that were predominantly orientated in the direction perpendicular to the major principal stress of extension path reduced soil anisotropy. Additionally, the was linearly correlated with the normalized cumulative strain energy () with a gradient of approximately 2, which implies that any recycling and recovering of strain energy was minimal in rooted 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.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by the General Research Fund (GRF) #16212818 by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council as well as Grant No. 51922112 provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Mar 24, 2021
Accepted: Sep 14, 2021
Published online: Oct 21, 2021
Published in print: Jan 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Mar 21, 2022
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