Eighth International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Seismic Performance of CentrePort Wellington
Publication: Geo-Congress 2019: Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics (GSP 308)
ABSTRACT
The Port of Wellington experienced liquefaction of reclaimed land in the 14 November 2016 Mw7.8 Kaikoura earthquake. The liquefaction caused global settlement of the sandy gravel and sandy fill deposits and lateral movement of the fills towards the sea. The reclamations at the port are comprised of different soil types (gravels and sands), different ages (40 to 100 years), and different methods of construction (end-tipped and hydraulic fills). Cone penetration tests were advanced successfully in gravelly fills using robust equipment. When combined with conventional soil exploratory borings, these data characterized well the liquefaction hazard at the port. The 30% to 60% of sand and silt in the well-graded gravelly fill largely determined its liquefaction resistance and seismic performance, suggesting the soil matrix is dominated by these finer particles. State-of-the-practice CPT-based liquefaction triggering and post-liquefaction reconsolidation settlement assessments identified loose zones of fill that likely liquefied, which produced widespread ejecta and caused damaging vertical and lateral ground movements. CPT-based procedures estimated well the vertical settlement of the gravel fills and the sand fills. Recommendations are made on how to best address the site investigation challenges at the gravelly soil areas of the port.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The NZ team reconnaissance effort was principally supported by EQC Capability Grant at the University of Canterbury, and MBIE support provided for the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake Reconnaissance. The US GEER team contributors were supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Engineering for Natural Hazards program under Grants CMMI-1266418 and CMMI-1724866. CPT exploration efforts were funded through the Natural Hazards Research Platform (NHRP) grant “Kaikoura Earthquake response – geotechnical characterization of CentrePort reclamations” provided by MBIE (NZ) and NSF Grant CMMI-1724866. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. The authors are grateful for the continuous collaboration provided by Tiffany Krall of CentrePort Ltd., including providing access to our team for multiple site visits and helping with our site investigations. We thank Stuart Palmer, Emilia Stocks, Richard Cole, Mike Jacka, and Sjoerd van Ballegooy from Tonkin + Taylor Ltd. for their great support and assistance throughout the reconnaissance and site investigations. Iain Haycock and the McMillan Drilling Group crew is acknowledged for performing the CPTs through challenging soil deposits and for cost-sharing the CPT work. Hugh Cowan’s assistance in gaining port access is greatly appreciated. The use of aerial survey data from Cardno is gratefully acknowledged. This work takes advantage of data collected in a NSF-sponsored GEER reconnaissance (see: www.geerassociation.org). This is a QuakeCoRE publication.
REFERENCES
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Geo-Congress 2019: Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics (GSP 308)
Pages: 76 - 89
Editors: Christopher L. Meehan, Ph.D., University of Delaware, Sanjeev Kumar, Ph.D., Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Miguel A. Pando, Ph.D., University of North Carolina Charlotte, and Joseph T. Coe, Ph.D., Temple University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8210-0
Copyright
© 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Mar 21, 2019
Published in print: Mar 21, 2019
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Earth materials
- Earthquake engineering
- Engineering fundamentals
- Fills
- Geomaterials
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Gravels
- Hydraulic engineering
- Hydraulic structures
- Infrastructure
- Pavements
- Ports and harbors
- Sandy soils
- Seismic effects
- Seismic tests
- Soil dynamics
- Soil liquefaction
- Soil mechanics
- Soil properties
- Soil settlement
- Soils (by type)
- Tests (by type)
- Transportation engineering
- Water and water resources
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