Liquefaction study of soils in unified model and liquefaction potential evaluation of compacted sand

Abstract

Owing to their specific sedimentary or weathering formation history, most soils confronted in civil engineering can be categorised into clayey and sandy soils. In view of the great mechanical difference, particularly the distinct liquefaction resistance, then precisely simulate the mechanical and liquefaction characteristics of different type soils become an important research issue in seismic design of civil engineering structures. Considering soil turns into overconsolidated state once experiences stress unloading, and which affects the mechanical and liquefaction characteristics in turn. Based on the classical Cam-clay model, with the introducing of subloading surface concept, the subloading surface Cam-clay model provide an unified constitutive model in the numerical simulation of different type soils. Based on the comprehensive parametric studies of state variables evolution and anti-liquefaction capability of soil conducted in this paper, we creatively unified the relationship between OCR and relative density of soil that widely adopted in the liquefaction resistance evaluation of sandy soil, and our test results shows high correlation between these two parameters. These findings provide a solid theoretic support and guidance for the dynamic compaction method that widely adopted in anti-liquefaction design.

Keywords:

• Overconsolidation
• liquefaction resistance
• anti-liquefaction
• subloading surface Cam-clay model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).