RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

GEOTECHNICAL AND STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

 Soil Improvement Methods
 Piles and Pile-Deck Connections
 Seismic Response of Container Cranes
 Nonlinear Dynamic Macroelements for Soil-Structure Interaction

PORT OPERATIONS AND LOGISTICS

 Simultaneous Berth and Crane Scheduling During Disrupted Operations

DECISION RESEARCH AND RISK ANALYSIS

 Development of a Hypothetical Port for Seismic Risk Analysis
 Decision Making Under Uncertainty

SOIL IMPROVEMENT METHODS

One of the goals of this project is to investigate two liquefaction mitigation techniques-
prefabricated vertical drains (PVD) and colloidal silica grout-that are well suited for
remediating hydraulic fills prone to liquefaction at port facilities. These techniques represent
relatively new and innovative technologies that still require validation and verification. PVD for
liquefaction remediation consist of corrugated, perforated, plastic pipe encased in a geotextile
fabric and can range from 75 to 150 mm in diameter. These relatively large diameters provide
the large flow capacity required to drain the soil quickly and rapidly dissipate excess pore
pressures. Passive site stabilization using colloidal silica grout involves slow injection of
stabilizing materials at the up-gradient edge of a site and delivery of the stabilizer to the target
location using natural or augmented groundwater flow. Upon delivery to the target location, the
stabilizer starts to gel or set rapidly at a predetermined time to bind the soil particles and
stabilize the soil mass.

The University of Texas (Rathje) is taking the lead on investigating PVDs, while Drexel
University (Gallagher) is taking the lead on investigating colloidal silica. Both UT and Drexel are
working in cooperation with UC Davis (Boulanger) to perform a series of centrifuge tests at the
NEESR@UCDavis geotechnical centrifuge , while UT and Drexel are working together to perform
field tests using the NEES@UTexas mobile shakers . The objectives of the experiments are to
investigate the effectiveness of both soil improvement methods in mitigating liquefaction
hazards. These data will be use to develop performance-based design guidelines and
constitutive and numerical models of soil behavior for improved soils.

The first centrifuge test to investigate PVDs was performed in March 2007. The centrifuge
specimen represents a lateral spread site of loose sand sloping 3° towards a channel cut along
the transverse axis (short direction) of the specimen box. Although this configuration does not
mimic a wharf facility specifically, it does model the most significant concern related to
liquefaction and port facilities: lateral spreading. The soil upslope of the channel on one side of
the specimen box was improved via PVDs, while the other side of the channel was left untreated.
This configuration allows for a direct comparison between treated and untreated soil under the
same excitation. Additional centrifuge tests are planned throughout 2007.

Following the centrifuge test program, the performance of prefabricated vertical drains and
colloidal silica grout will be investigated via a full-scale field test using a large, mobile shaker
operated by the NEES Equipment Site at the University of Texas at Austin. The field tests
provide an opportunity to evaluate the two techniques in natural soils using the same
installation methods employed in practice. At present, four candidate field sites are being
considered as test-beds: (1) Port of Seattle, (2) Port of Oakland, (3) Port of Los Angeles, and (4)
Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, CA. Available geotechnical data is being reviewed to
assess the suitability of the site for full-scale field tests.

Supplementing the centrifuge and field tests are laboratory element tests at MIT and Georgia
Tech to improve our understanding of the constitutive properties of the soils treated with
colloidal silica grout. Resonant column and simple shear tests are being conducted on three
different concentrations of colloidal silica gel and sand mixtures. The behavior of the gelled
samples is being compared to pure sand samples and the effect of the concentration of colloidal
silica gel by percent weight is being investigated. The influence of cyclic shear strain on the
dynamic properties is also being examined.

The first centrifuge test on prefabricated vertical drains (PVD) was successful in inducing
significant pore water pressure, liquefaction, and lateral spread movements. At lower intensity
levels, the presence of the PVDs minimized pore pressure generation as compared with the
untreated section. At larger shaking levels, water discharged from the drains, yet pore pressure
ratios close to 1.0 were observed. Nonetheless, movements were limited for the section treated
with drains, while significant lateral spreading occurred on the untreated section. These results
are somewhat surprising in that the performance of the site was improved even though large
excess pore pressures were observed.

PILES AND PILE-DECK CONNECTIONS

The objectives of the pile and pile-structural connection research program are to:

 develop tools to evaluate the performance of existing pile-wharf systems,

 develop design methods for establishing optimal seismic performance from the pile-soil-
structural system, and
 develop improved pile and pile-structural connection systems that are economical and
improve the seismic performance of port facilities.

The research team at the University of Washington has been evaluating past research results
and professional practice. They met with practicing port design engineers at the Port of Seattle
on December 7, 2006 to discuss current practice to evaluate different pile connection options.
Approximately eight local practicing engineers attended this meeting. A second meeting was
held with port engineers from California (in Oakland, CA) on January 17, 2007.From these
meetings some initial connections have been selected for study. These connections have been
designed, and construction of the specimens has started. The first specimen was tested at the
University of Washington in September 2007
SEISMIC RESPONSE OF CONTAINER CRANES
Growth of container cranes has paralleled the growth of container traffic in order to serve the
ever-larger ships. Today's typical new crane is three times the size of early cranes. With the
increased mass and size comes the potential for increased seismic vulnerability. In order to
further understand this seismic vulnerability, detailed time-history analysis is to be performed
on both analytical and experimental models. Results will lead to recommendations for
retrofitting current cranes, as well as performance-based design recommendations for future
container cranes.

A two-dimensional analytical, container crane model has been created in OPENSees, as well as a
1:40 scale physical shake-table model. These preliminary tools are helping to refine an
analytical model based on a 2001 Port of Oakland crane, which will be expanded to three
dimensions. This will be used to identify key response quantities that will be targeted for
measurement during a shake-table test of a large-scale physical model at NEES@Buffalo
planned for later in the project.

The project team is also investigating ways to make existing container cranes less vulnerable to
earthquake loading through retrofit techniques. During the past year, a literature search has
been performed to identify current techniques used for mitigating damage. Finite element
models are being created in OPENSees of existing container cranes with and without potential
retrofit techniques to assess their performance during an earthquake event. These models will
be validated via condition monitoring of in situ cranes and the shake-table test of a large-scale
physical model planned for later in the project.

Initial analytical results indicate that, as expected, allowing column uplift greatly reduces the
critical moments in the lower legs and the portal beam of the crane. However, unless special
care is taken during their design, the portal frame legs could easily fail prior to column uplift,
leading to collapse. This response is different than older cranes, in which rocking is likely to
occur well before yielding of the columns. Currently, work is being done to model the column
yielding within the analytical model.

NONLINEAR DYNAMIC MACROELEMENTS FOR SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION

The soil-pile interaction will be captured by means of a macroelement comprising three
components that represent the primary resistance mechanisms of the continuum to the
foundation elements upon transient loading: (i) the pressure in the direction of loading, (ii) the
pressure and gap formation in the opposite direction, and (iii) the potential drag exerted by the
pile due to flow of soil for the case of large deformations. These mechanisms and corresponding
mechanical components of the macroelement are shown in the figure below, while the
individual components are briefly described in the ensuing.
1. The Front Face element: The front face element captures the response of soil in front of the
pile. It comprises of the following components:
 Gap element: The gap element simulates the development of active and passive
conditions in soil on front of the pile during cyclic loading. It is characterized by a tensile
strength σt. On reversal of loading direction, when the developed tensile stress exceeds
the tensile strength, gap formation between pile and soil interface takes place and there
is minimal contribution from front face to the total soil resistance.
 Spring element: The spring element is a non-linear spring with a characteristic loading
curve. The loading curve will be able to capture the soil response to varying degree of
complexity depending on type of constitutive model used for soil, which is further
governed, by the amount of experimental data available. The soil parameters controlling
the shape of curve are shear modulus, Poisson ratio and strain dependent modulus
degradation. The spring also captures hysteretic damping of soil in cyclic loading by
using Masing Rule and the backbone curve.
 Dashpot element: The dashpot element captures the energy dissipation due to
geometrical attenuation of waves emanating from the pile surface and transporting
energy away from the foundation. It is characterized by a damping coefficient C that is
controlled by both soil properties (shear modulus and density) as well as shape of cross
section of pile.
 Coulomb Friction element: The friction element is characterized by the ultimate
resistance σy that is offered by the soil, i.e., the stress at which the plastic zone around
the pile is sufficiently big so that soil can mobilize no additional resistance for
incremental displacement.
2. Rear Face element: The rear face element captures the response of soil in rear side of the
pile and has the same components as front face element. The only difference is that gap
element is connected in opposite orientation and hence the whole element works in
opposite phase as front face element, i.e., when the front element is in active condition, the
rear element is in passive and vice-versa.
3. Drag element: The drag element captures the drag exerted by flow of soil around the pile
during large displacements. It consists of the following components:
  Spring element: The spring element captures the behavior of soil-pile interface as a non-
linear spring and is characterized by a loading curve whose complexity depends on the
amount of experimental data available regarding the interface behavior.
 Coulomb-friction element: It captures the maximum frictional drag resistance between
soil and pile when soil begins to flow around the pile.

The figure below shows the target response (lateral displacement) of a short pile subjected to
transverse loading, to be captured by the simplified macroelement described above. Note that
on the rear side of pile, the formation of a gap is depicted by the estimated zero displacement.
Once the formulation of the individual components will be completed, the effectiveness of the
simplified approach will be compared against the target 3D FE simulations.

SIMULTANEOUS BERTH AND CRANE SCHEDULING DURING DISRUPTED OPERATIONS

The goal of this project is to develop new, advanced optimization approaches for the
simultaneous scheduling of berth and quay crane resources at container ports. Since
appropriate mathematical models of these resources lead to difficult-to-solve integer
programming formulations, effective metaheuristic approaches will be applied to search for
global optima. Fast scheduling heuristics developed under this project will be a critical tool
needed to determine the operational impacts of damage to key port infrastructure.
Furthermore, this decision technology can serve as a prototype for terminal operators, and can
be used to assist port scheduling during the irregular operating periods following earthquake
events.

In the first year, we have focused our research attention on the scheduling problem for the most
critical resources in a container terminal, berth and quay cranes. We have developed
simultaneous berth and quay crane scheduling models for static vessel arrival schedules for
multiple-day planning horizons. Unlike most work found in the literature, we treat the two
scheduling problems simultaneously because the vessel berth duration depends directly on the
number of cranes serving the vessel over time. For small test problems, we are able to formulate
and solve a mixed integer program optimization model for this problem using standard
commercial-strength integer programming solvers. However, the problems solvable are of
unrealistic size. We therefore have developed two alternative metaheuristic algorithms for
determining approximately-optimal schedules. Both methods are nested tabu search heuristics.
The first metaheuristic approach, denoted the one-phase heuristic, uses three nested searches.
The outermost search makes changes to the vessel priority sequence, the middle search makes
changes to the vessel berthing locations, while the innermost search makes changes to the crane
allocation. Evaluating a local move from one solution to another at an outer layer requires
running tabu searches at inner layers. The second metaheuristic, denoted the two-phase
heuristic, uses a first phase with two nested searches on vessel priority and berth locations, but
evaluates the changes with upper and lower bound approximations to the crane allocation
subproblem. It then passes a small set (typically 100) of best solutions to a second phase with
uses another tabu search to determine exact crane allocations and cost.

The developed metaheuristics for the berth and quay crane scheduling problem were tested on
representative sample problems. We first generated small problems with a berthing area
capable of at most two simultaneously vessel berthings, four quay cranes, and five arriving
vessels. For these problems, the mixed integer programming formulation was solvable using
commercial-strength integer programming solvers. Optimal solutions were found for all
instances, with average compute times of 10 minutes but a maximum time of 2.5 hours. The two
metaheuristics were also able to solve each of these problems optimally, but each instance was
solved in less than one second of compute time. The metaheuristics also performed well on
realistically-sized problem instances. We developed test sets with longer berthing areas capable of
four simultaneous vessel berthings, 10 quay cranes, and 20-30 arriving vessels over a three-day
planning horizon. Such problems are intractable to solve with the exact mixed-integer
programming model, but can be solved approximately via the metaheuristics with run times
ranging from 2 to 20 minutes. In general, the two-phase approach provided better solutions
faster than the one-phase heuristic.

DEVELOPMENT OF A HYPOTHETICAL PORT FOR SEISMIC RISK ANALYSIS

A major objective of the project is to develop a multi-disciplinary, seismic-risk-evaluation
framework for port systems that will incorporate models and procedures developed from the
various earthquake-engineering, system-operations, and decision-guidance research tasks that
comprise this project. When this framework and its various models are developed, we plan to
apply the framework to a hypothetical port system to illustrate the types of results that the
framework can provide and how these results can be used to guide seismic-risk-reduction
decision-making. Our intent is to make our hypothetical port representative of large U.S.
container ports that are the focus of our project. During the past year, we have begun to define
the baseline physical and operational characteristics of the hypothetical port.
The accompanying figure shows the hypothetical port system in its current, draft form. This
system includes four container-cargo terminals (with waterfront structures and backlands) that
together include a total of nine berths of varying lengths. The total number of berths was
selected in an attempt to strike a balance between being small enough so that the system
seismic risk analyses will not be overly onerous while, at the same time, being large enough to
represent a reasonable degree of system redundancy typical of a large port. The system also
includes roads (that could include bridges with varying levels of seismic vulnerability) for
transport of cargoes to and from the terminals via land.

In addition to the physical configuration of the port, the hypothetical port definition also
includes:

 Berth capacities
 The number and type of container cranes
 Soil wharf, and crane engineering models of varying seismic vulnerabilities
 Present and future shipping demands
 Financial information used to estimate indirect losses

DECISION MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY

An objective of the project is to re-evaluate pertinent financial risk and decision procedures for
assessing seismic risk reduction measures. Previous port seismic risk and decision procedures
have benefited from the application of the mean-variance criterion (MVC). Current work is
exploring whether or not stochastic dominance procedures are superior to the MVC approaches
in these decisions. A simplified "quantile" method has been proposed for evaluating diverse
mitigation investments in terms of stochastic dominance methods. This method attempts to
render stochastic dominance methods more calculable given current capabilities in electronic
technology. This method considers a risk-averse as well as a risk-taking re-interpretation of
these and other financial methods in terms of total costs. Issues arising from the use of MVC and
stochastic dominance approaches arise from the left-tail of total cost distributions, or,
equivalently, estimates at the lowest quantiles. For the original interpretation, these problems
arise because there may be exposure periods during which there are mitigation costs but no
gains. For the re-interpretation stressing a risk-averse approach, extreme risk aversion
conditions the application of stochastic dominance methods. These limitations are, though, by
no means so severe as for other financial decision methods.

Previously used financial methods for evaluating catastrophe risk-reduction methods for port
and other infrastructure systems have been shown to have limitations. One promising method,
second-order stochastic dominance (SSD) deserves exploration because it purports to take into
account the entire distribution of costs and gains. One previously stated limitation of this
approach is that it requires more calculations than say benefit-cost, least total mean cost, or
mean-variance criterion (MVC) approaches. This limitation is overcome in this study through
the use of random walks, in the first place, and the use of a simplified numerical integration
procedure, in the second place, and new electronic technologies, in the third place. However,
these simplifications show how the SSD criterion may encounter limitations when faced with
catastrophes having low probabilities of occurrence, so low that during a specific exposure
period no catastrophe damage may result. These limitations typically only involve adding
alternatives to the efficient set that can be removed on judgment by the decision-maker. There
are no doubt many decisions involving tradeoffs between the least total mean cost and
extremely rare events that may pose challenges to the application of these principles. Still,
these methods permit clarification of the nature of these challenging decisions.