Influence of fines content on liquefaction from a critical state framework: the Christchurch earthquake case study

In earthquake engineering practice, the liquefaction potential of soils is commonly evaluated through simplified procedures. These approaches are suitable for sands with very low to no fines content, which have been traditionally thought be only liquefiable materials. However, field observations and experimental research extensively demonstrated that plasticity silty can also highly liquefiable. Thus, this paper investigates effect nonplastic contents on soils, taking 2010–2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence as a case study. The validity standard procedures high content critically compared finite element model based full solid–fluid coupled formulation. includes state parameter-based constitutive law within generalised theory, allows taken into account explicitly. shown less effective in evaluation but still indispensable tools evaluating performance over large urban areas. As main conclusion, it recommended empirical models complemented an advanced numerical analysis those cases where identified, its outcomes more realistically represent soil behaviour during seismic event.