A Framework for Assessing Liquefaction Hazard for Urban Areas Based on Soil Dynamics

Abstract

Soil liquefaction induced by earthquakes poses a great threat to urban areas, not only by causing direct damages to infrastructures but also by delaying rescue and relief actions. Established engineering assessment methods using indices such as factor of safety against liquefaction (FL) tend to overestimate liquefaction hazards. While the standard usage of soil dynamic analysis for liquefaction assessment is limited to a single site with detailed site information. In this paper, we propose a framework based on soil dynamics for assessing liquefaction hazard for urban areas which contain numerous sites with borehole logs only. The framework is featured by generating analysis models and by estimating material parameters automatically from available borehole information. The governing equations for soil dynamics are solved by a finite element code. Liquefaction hazard is assessed according to the solutions of excess pore water pressure for given seismic waves. As demonstrations, we show simulation results of simple shear tests and of seismic response for a target site under loadings of artificial and of actual seismic waves. The automatic model construction and parameter estimation enable this framework being applied effectively for urban-area-wide liquefaction assessment, as an alternative for the current practices based on engineering indices.