Influence of Nonplastic Fines on Shear Wave Velocity-Based Assessment of Liquefaction
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 132, Issue 8
Abstract
Many false positives (no liquefaction detected when the normalized shear wave velocity-cyclic stress ratio combination indicated that it should have been) are observed in the database used in the simplified liquefaction assessment procedure based on shear wave velocity. Two possible reasons for false positives are the presence of a thick surface layer of nonliquefiable soil and the effects of fines on cyclic shear resistance (CRR) and . About 67% of the false positives that could not have been caused by an overlying thick surface layer are associated with silty sands with less than 35% fines. The effects of fines on the liquefaction resistance of silty sands and on the shear wave velocity are analyzed. Theoretical curves for silty sands containing 0 to 15% nonplastic fines are established. They show that the theoretical correlations for silty sands with 5 to 15% nonplastic fines are all located to the far left of the semi-empirical curves that separate liquefaction from no-liquefaction zones in the simplified liquefaction potential assessment procedures. The results suggest the currently used shear wave velocity-based liquefaction potential curves may be overly conservative when applied to sands containing nonplastic fines.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Professor Rodrigo Salgado for making available many of the test results needed for the computations used in this paper, and Professor Ross Boulanger for valuable comments.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 132 • Issue 8 • August 2006
Pages: 1091 - 1097
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jun 29, 2004
Accepted: Jan 12, 2006
Published online: Aug 1, 2006
Published in print: Aug 2006
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