Learning of Dynamic Soil Behavior from Downhole Arrays
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 135, Issue 6
Abstract
An increasing number of downhole arrays are deployed to measure motions at the ground surface and within the soil profile. Measurements from these arrays provide an opportunity to improve site response models and to better understand underlying dynamic soil behavior. Parametric inverse analysis approaches have been used to identify constitutive model parameters to achieve a better match with field observations. However, they are limited by the selected material model. Nonparametric inverse analysis approaches identify averaged soil behavior between measurement locations. A novel inverse analysis framework, self-learning simulations (SelfSim), is employed to reproduce the measured downhole array response while extracting the underlying soil behavior of individual soil layers unconstrained by prior assumptions of soil behavior. SelfSim is successfully applied to recordings from Lotung and La Cienega. The extracted soil behavior from few events can be used to reliably predict the measured response for other events. The field extracted soil behavior shows dependencies of shear modulus and damping on cyclic shear strain level, number of loading cycles, and strain rate that are similar qualitatively to those reported from laboratory studies but differ quantitatively.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Earthquake Engineering Research Centers Program of the National Science Foundation under Award No. NSFEEC-9701785; the Mid-America Earthquake Center. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The writers gratefully acknowledge this support.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 135 • Issue 6 • June 2009
Pages: 745 - 757
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Sep 6, 2007
Accepted: Sep 19, 2008
Published online: Feb 19, 2009
Published in print: Jun 2009
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