Soil Liquefaction–Induced Uplift of Underground Structures: Physical and Numerical Modeling
This article has a reply.
VIEW THE REPLYThis article has a reply.
VIEW THE REPLYPublication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 10
Abstract
Underground structures located in liquefiable soil deposits are susceptible to floatation following a major earthquake event. Such failure phenomenon generally occurs when the soil liquefies and loses its shear resistance against the uplift force from the buoyancy of the underground structure. Numerical modeling accompanied with centrifuge experiments with shallow circular structures has been carried out to investigate the floatation failure at different buried depths of the structure. The influence of the magnitude of input sinusoidal earthquake shaking was also studied. Both numerical and experimental results showed matching uplift response of the structures and acceleration and pore-pressure measurements in the liquefied soil deposit. A higher uplift displacement of the structure was observed for shallower buried depth, thereby indicating the influence of overlying soil weight against floatation. Results also showed that the structures commenced floatation in the presence of high excess pore pressure, but they ceased when the earthquake shaking stopped. The higher rate of uplift in stronger earthquake shaking further substantiates the dependency of the uplift to the shaking amplitude. A constant rate of uplift of the structure was attained after the soil liquefied, hence postulating a possible limit to shear modulus degradation of the surrounding soil caused by soil-structure interaction. This is inferred by the lower excess pore-pressure generation near the structure. The displacement of liquefied soil around the displaced structure was also confirmed to resemble a global circular flow mechanism from the crown of the structure to its invert as observed in displacement vector plots obtained from numerical analysis and particle image velocimetry (PIV) in centrifuge tests. Further numerical analysis on the performance of buried sewer pipelines in Urayasu City, Chiba Prefecture following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake indicated high damage susceptibility of rigid pipelines in the liquefiable soil deposit. These consistencies with field observations clearly demonstrate and pave the prospects of applying numerical and/or experimental analyses for geotechnical problems associated with the floatation of underground structures in liquefiable soils.
Formats available
You can view the full content in the following formats:
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the financial support from the Cambridge Trust at the University of Cambridge and the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology via the International Urban Earthquake Engineering Center for Mitigating Seismic Mega Risk program at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
References
Adalier, K., et al. (2003). “Centrifuge modeling for seismic retrofit design of an immersed tube tunnel.” J. Phys. Model. Geotech., 3(2), 23–32.
Bouferra, R., Benseddiq, N., and Shahrour, I. (2007). “Saturation and preloading effects on the cyclic behavior of sand.” Int. J. Geomech., 396–401.
Byrne, P. M., et al. (2004). “Numerical modeling of dynamic centrifuge tests.” Proc., 13th World Conf. on Earthquake Engineering, International Association for Earthquake Engineering, Tokyo.
Cheney, J., Hor, O., Brown, R., and Dhat, N. (1988). “Foundation vibration in centrifuge models.” Proc., Centrifuge 88, CRC Press, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 481–486.
Chian, S. C., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2010). “Use of PIV analysis for soil deformations around a tunnel in liquefiable soils.” Proc., 14th European Conf. on Earthquake Engineering, Macedonian Association for Earthquake Engineering (MAEE), Ohrid, Macedonia.
Chian, S. C., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2011). “Displacement of tunnels in liquefied sand deposits.” Proc., 8th Int. Conf. on Urban Earthquake Engineering, Center for Urban Earthquake Engineering (CUEE), Tokyo, 517−522.
Chian, S. C., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2012). “Excess pore pressures around underground structures following earthquake induced liquefaction.” J. Geotech. Earthquake Eng., 3(2), 25–41.
Chian, S. C., Stringer, M. E., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2010). “Use of automatic sand pourers for loose sand models.” Proc., 7th Int. Conf. on Physical Modelling of Geotechnics, CRC Press, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 117–121.
Chian, S. C., and Tokimatsu, K. (2012). “Floatation of underground structures during the Tōhoku Earthquake of 11th March 2011.” Proc., 15th World Conf. on Earthquake Engineering, International Association for Earthquake Engineering, Tokyo.
Chou, J. C., Kutter, B. L., Travasarou, T., and Chacko, J. M. (2011). “Centrifuge modeling of seismically induced uplift for the BART Transbay Tube.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 754–765.
Cilingir, U., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2011). “Effect of depth on seismic response of circular tunnels.” Can. Geotech. J., 48(1), 117–127.
Dafalias, Y. F., and Popov, E. P. (1977). “Cyclic loading for materials with a vanishing elastic region.” Nucl. Eng. Des., 41(2), 293–302.
Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua (FLAC) 7 [Computer software]. Minneapolis, Itasca Consulting Group.
Haigh, S. K., Eadington, J., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2012). “Permeability and stiffness of sands at very low effective stresses.” Géotechnique, 62(1), 69–75.
Hashiguchi, K., and Ueno, M. (1977). “Elasto-plastic constitutive laws of granular materials.” Proc., 9th Int. Conf. on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, International Society on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, London, 73–82.
Koseki, J., Matsuo, O., and Koga, Y. (1997). “Uplift behavior of underground structures caused by liquefaction of surrounding soil during earthquake.” Soils Found., 37(1), 97–108.
Ling, H. I., Mohri, Y., Kawabata, T., Liu, H., Burke, C., and Sun, L. (2003). “Centrifugal modeling of seismic behavior of large-diameter pipe in liquefiable soil.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 1092–1101.
Ling, H. I., Sun, L., Liu, H., Mohri, Y., and Kawabata, T. (2008). “Finite element analysis of pipe buried in saturated soil deposit subject to earthquake loading.” J. Earthquake Tsunami, 02(01), 1–17.
Liquefaction Mitigation Investigation Committee, Chiba Prefecture. (2011). “Reports of committee meetings on liquefaction mitigation at Urayasu, Chiba, Japan.” Chiba Prefectural Government, Chiba, Japan (in Japanese).
Madabhushi, S. P. G., Schofield, A. N., and Lesley, S. (1998). “A new stored angular momentum based earthquake actuator.” Proc., Centrifuge ’98, Vol. 1, CRC Press, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 111–116.
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT). (2013). “Liquefaction mitigation of residential areas using lattice-like underground wall construction method.” Technical Rep., Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Tokyo (in Japanese).
Mitrani, H. (2006). “Liquefaction remediation techniques for existing buildings.” Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge Univ., Cambridge, U.K.
Mroz, Z., and Zienkiewicz, O. C. (1984). “Uniform formulation of constitutive equations for clays and sands.” Mechanics of engineering materials, C. S. Desai and H. R. Gallagher, eds., Wiley, Chichester, U.K., 415–449.
Sasaki, T., Matsuo, O., and Kondo, K. (1999). “Centrifuge model tests on uplift behavior of buried structures during earthquakes.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering, Portuguese Geotechnical Society, Lisbon, Portugal, 315–320.
Schofield, A. N. (1980). “Cambridge geotechnical centrifuge operations.” Géotechnique, 25(4), 743–761.
Schofield, A. N. (1981). “Dynamic and earthquake geotechnical centrifuge modeling.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics, Vol. 3, Univ. of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, MO, 1081–1100.
Steedman, R. S., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (1991). “Wave propagation in sand medium.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Seismic Zonation, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Oakland, CA, 253–260.
Stewart, D. P., Chen, Y.-R., and Kutter, B. L. (1998). “Experience with the use of methylcellulose as a viscous pore fluid in centrifuge models.” Geotech. Test. J., 21(4), 365–369.
Stringer, M. E., and Madabhushi, S. P. G. (2009). “Novel computer-controlled saturation of dynamic centrifuge models using high viscosity fluids.” Geotech. Test. J., 32(6), 559–564.
Sun, Y., Klein, S., Caulfield, J., Romero, V., and Wong, J. (2008). “Seismic analyses of the Bay Tunnel.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics IV, ASCE, Reston, VA, 1–11.
Teymur, B. T. (2002). “Boundary effects in dynamic centrifuge modeling.” Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge Univ., Cambridge, U.K.
Tobita, T., Kang, G.-C., and Iai, S. (2011). “Centrifuge modeling on manhole uplift in a liquefied trench.” Soils Found., 51(6), 1091–1102.
Tobita, T., Kang, G.-C., and Iai, S. (2012). “Estimation of liquefaction-induced manhole uplift displacements and trench-backfill settlements.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 491–499.
Tokimatsu, K., Tamura, S., Suzuki, H., and Katsumata, K. (2011). “Quick report on geotechnical problems in the 2011 Tōhoku Pacific Ocean Earthquake.” Technical Rep., Center for Urban Earthquake Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo (in Japanese).
Wang, Z.-L., Dafalias, Y. F., and Shen, C.-K. (1990). “Bounding surface hypoplasticity model for sand.” J. Eng. Mech., 983–1001.
Yang, D., Naesgaard, E., Byrne, P. M., Adalier, K., and Abdoun, T. (2004). “Numerical model verification and calibration of George Massey Tunnel using centrifuge models.” Can. Geotech. J., 41(5), 921–942.
Zeng, X., and Schofield, A. N. (1996). “Design and performance of an equivalent-shear-beam container for earthquake centrifuge modelling.” Géotechnique, 46(1), 83–102.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 140 • Issue 10 • October 2014
Copyright
This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
History
Received: Aug 12, 2013
Accepted: Jun 4, 2014
Published online: Jul 11, 2014
Published in print: Oct 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Dec 11, 2014
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.