Soil liquefaction as an identification test

Abstract

Time-consuming and complicated investigations of soil liquefaction in cyclic triaxial tests are the most common way of laboratory analysis of this phenomenon. Moreover, the necessary equipment for the performance of cyclic triaxial tests is very expensive. Much simpler method for laboratory testing of the soil liquefaction has been developed at the Institute of Geotechnical Engineering at the TU Dresden. This method takes into account the pore water pressure build-up during cyclic shearing within a short time period. During the test, the soil sample is subjected to horizontal cyclic loading and the generated pore water pressure is measured. In the first series of these experiments, a dependence of the pore water pressure buildup on the initial density of soil could be observed, as expected. When comparing different soils, it is shown that the tendency to liquefaction depends also on the granulometric properties (e.g. grain size distribution) of the soil. The aim of the further development is to establish a simple identification test for laboratory testing of the soil liquefaction.