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Liquefaction-induced building movements

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Abstract

Liquefaction or cyclic softening from earthquake shaking have caused significant damage of buildings with shallow foundations. In recent earthquakes, buildings have punched into, tilted excessively, and slid laterally on liquefied/softened ground. The state-of-the-practice still largely involves estimating building settlement using empirical procedures developed to calculate post-liquefaction, one-dimensional, consolidation settlement in the “free-field” away from buildings. Performance-based earthquake engineering requires improved procedures, because these free-field analyses cannot possibly capture shear-induced and localized volumetric-induced deformations in the soil underneath shallow foundations. Recent physical and numerical modeling has provided useful insights into this problem. Centrifuge tests revealed that much of the building movement occurs during earthquake strong shaking, and its rate is dependent on the shaking intensity rate. Additionally, shear strains due to shaking-induced ratcheting of the buildings into the softened soil and volumetric strains due to localized drainage in response to high transient hydraulic gradients are important effects that are not captured in current procedures. Nonlinear effective stress analyses can capture the soil and building responses reasonably well and provide valuable insights. Based on these studies, recommendations for estimating liquefaction-induced movements of buildings with shallow foundations are made.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. CMMI-0530714. 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. Profs. Juan Pestana and Michael Riemer of UC Berkeley and Dr. Daniel Wilson of UC Davis participated in the NSF-funded centrifuge testing program. Prof. Bruce Kutter of UC Davis shared insights. Centrifuge tests were performed at the large geotechnical centrifuge at UC Davis, which is supported by the NSF George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program under Award No. CMMI-0402490. The staff at UC Davis was of great help in performing these tests. NSF also provided support through the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association for much of the field studies through Award No. CMMI-0825734 and other CMMI RAPID grants. Prof. Misko Cubrinovski of the Univ. of Canterbury, Prof. Kohji Tokimatsu of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Prof. Tara Hutchinson of UC San Diego, Prof. Pedro Arduino of Univ. of Washington, Prof. David Frost of Georgia Tech., Prof. Christian Ledezma of Pontificia Univ. Católica de Chile, Dr. Rodolfo Sancio of Geosyntec Consultants, Prof. Les Youd of BYU, Prof. Tom O’Rourke of Cornell Univ., Prof. Russell Green of Virginia Tech, Prof. Liam Wotherspoon of Auckland Univ., Prof. Brendon Bradley of Univ. of Canterbury, Josh Zupan of UC Berkeley, Merrick Taylor of Univ. of Canterbury, and others participated in the field studies. Professor Peter Bryne of the Univ. of British Columbia shared his UBCSAND model with us and provided guidance on its use.

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  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1710, USA

    Jonathan D. Bray

  2. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Shideh Dashti

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Correspondence to Jonathan D. Bray.

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Bray, J.D., Dashti, S. Liquefaction-induced building movements. Bull Earthquake Eng 12, 1129–1156 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-014-9619-8

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