The 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering
Abstract
Liquefaction phenomenon in saturated granular soil is not that frequent as amplification cases but can cause
heavy damages on buildings and infrastructures whenever is occurs especially within superficial strata. In fact
the lack of shear resistance of soil due to liquefaction affects mostly shallow foundations and road surfaces. Up
now, several studies have been addressed to overpass the inadequacy of liquefaction safety factor by means of
introducing the liquefaction potential. Nevertheless, the difficulty in (1) defining a scale of damage related to
liquefaction potential values and (2) collecting field data from damages caused prevalently by liquefaction
makes the punctual factor of safety still popular in engineering practice. In this paper a new approach to
liquefaction potential estimation is proposed based on finite element dynamic analyses and on the concept of
“significant volume” according to possible effects suffered by shallow foundations. One-dimensional
simulation of liquefaction occurrence is performed by means of the Pastor-Zienkiewicz constitutive law. Hence
the estimation of liquefaction potential is gained as well as the stress influence factor from Westergaard
solution is calculated
