Numerical assessment of the performance of different constitutive models used to predict liquefiable soil behavior

Abstract

Liquefaction has caused severe damages to structures such as excessive settlements, tilting, lateral spreading etc., all over the world during many past earthquakes. Hence, the efficient prediction of liquefiable soil behavior is crucial for liquefaction-induced hazard evaluation of existing structures and the design of new structures in seismically active regions. In this study, a series of nonlinear effective stress analyses are carried out using the DeepSoil and OpenSees opensource software with Modified Kondner–Zelasko (MKZ) and Pressure Dependent Multi Yield02 (PDMY02) constitutive models to evaluate their capabilities in terms of predicting liquefiable soil behavior. The performance of the models has been evaluated by comparing the results between the numerical predictions and a centrifuge study from literature in terms of excess pore water pressures, acceleration-time histories, spectral accelerations, lateral displacements and maximum profile responses at specific depths. The results clearly illustrate that the excess pore water pressure predictions from nonlinear analyses are reasonably close to centrifuge measurements, but the accelerations and lateral displacements are slightly different. It is also observed that dissimilarities in the predictions of the numerical simulations are more obvious for OpenSees simulations with respect to DeepSoil ones.