Seasonally Frozen Soil Effects on the Seismic Site Response
Publication: Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 25, Issue 2
Abstract
Several large-magnitude earthquakes, including the Prince William Sound earthquake of March 1964 and the Denali earthquake of November 2002, occurred in the state of Alaska and caused considerable damages to its transportation system, including damage to several highway bridges and related infrastructure. Some of these damages are related to frozen soil effects. However, only limited research has been carried out to investigate the effects of frozen soils on seismic site responses. A systematic investigation of seasonally frozen soil effects on the seismic site response has been conducted and is presented in this paper. One bridge site in Anchorage, Alaska, was selected to represent typical sites with seasonally frozen soils. A set of input ground motions was selected from available strong-motion databases and scaled to generate an ensemble of hazard-consistent input motions. One-dimensional equivalent linear analysis was adopted to analyze the seismic site response for three seismic hazard levels, i.e., maximum considered earthquake (MCE), AASHTO design, and service design level hazards. Parametric studies were conducted to assess the sensitivity of the results to uncertainties associated with the thickness and shear-wave velocity of seasonally frozen soils. The results show that the spectral response of ground motions decreases as the thickness of seasonally frozen soil increases, and the results are insensitive to the shear-wave velocity of seasonally frozen soils. In conclusion, it is generally conservative to ignore the effects of seasonally frozen soils on seismic site response in the design of highway bridges.
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Acknowledgments
The research was performed under AUTC Project UNSPECIFIED#107017 jointly funded by Alaska University Transportation Center and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. We thankfully acknowledge suggestions and comments from Dr. Kenan Hazirbaba, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Mr. Billy G. Connor, Director of Alaska University Transportation Center, during different stages of this research. The authors are thankful to the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 2 • June 2011
Pages: 53 - 70
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 8, 2009
Accepted: Aug 12, 2010
Published online: Aug 18, 2010
Published in print: Jun 1, 2011
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