Liquefaction Potential of Recent Fills versus Natural Sands Located in High-Seismicity Regions Using Shear-Wave Velocity
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Volume 141, Issue 3
Abstract
The liquefaction potential of clean and silty sands is examined on the basis of the field measurement of the shear-wave velocity, . The starting point is the database of 225 case histories supporting the Andrus-Stokoe -based liquefaction chart for sands, silts, and gravels. Only clean and silty sands with nonplastic fines are considered, resulting in a reduced database of 110 case histories, which are plotted separately by type of deposit. A line of constant cyclic shear strain, , is recommended for liquefaction evaluation of recent uncompacted clean and silty sand fills and earthquake magnitude, . The geologically recent natural silty sand sites in the Imperial Valley of southern California have significantly higher liquefaction resistance as a result of preshaking caused by the high seismic activity in the valley. A line of constant cyclic shear strain, , is recommended for practical use in the Imperial Valley. Additional research including revisiting available -based and penetration-based databases is proposed to generalize the results of the paper and develop liquefaction charts that account more realistically for deposit type, seismic history, and geologic age.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are very grateful to a number of colleagues for their valuable contributions to the process of preparing this paper: Ronald Andrus, Ignacio Arango, Thomas Holzer, Brady Cox, Waleed El-Sekelly, Geoff Martin, Vicente Mercado, Maurice Power, Robert Pyke, Walter Silva, Jamison Steidl, and T. Leslie Youd. The support of the National Science Foundation and the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation under NESSR-SG Grant No. 0529995 is also gratefully acknowledged.
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Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 3 • March 2015
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Received: May 1, 2013
Accepted: Oct 2, 2014
Published online: Nov 10, 2014
Published in print: Mar 1, 2015
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