Radu Popescu -
Jean H. Prevost -
George Deodatis
Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
May 1996
The effects of spatial variability of soil properties on the behavior of saturated soil deposits subjected to seismic excitation are analyzed, and their implications on geotechnical design are discussed. A Monte Carlo simulation methodology, combining digital generation of non-Gaussian stochastic vector fields with dynamic, nonlinear finite element analyses is used for that purpose. The proposed procedure is applied to assess the soil liquefaction potential, which is found to be considerably affected by the inherent spatial variability of soil properties. Parametric studies, involving the degree of soil liquefaction and the frequency content of the seismic input are performed. Finally, a characteristic percentile value of soil strength, which will predict a response equivalent to that provided by the more expensive Monte Carlo simulations, is proposed for use in deterministic design.
Keywords
Statistical analysis, Liquefaction, Shear strength, Sands, Numerical modeling and analysis, In situ testing.
Acknowledgements
The work reported in this study was supported in part by a collaborative
research agreement between Kajima Corporation, Japan and Princeton
University.
This support is gratefully acknowledged.
The authors are also indebted to Dr. Michael G. Jefferies for providing
the field data, reviewing the paper and offering many valuable
suggestions.
This work was also supported by the National Science Foundation under
Grant \#~BCS--9257900 with Dr. Clifford J. Astill as Program Director.
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