ee MECHANICS AND BITUMINOUS MATERIALS. RESEARCH LABORATORY a 3 STUDIES OF THE LIQUEFACTION OF SANDS UNDER CYCLIC LOADING CONDITIONS by H. BOLTON SEED and KENNETH L. LEE uBepert No. TE-65-5 fo STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES ag DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING INSTITUTE OF TRANSPORTATION AND TRAFFIC ENGINEERING piven of (California + Berkeley_S0!t Mechanics and pituminous Matertats : S Research Laboratory 7 (STUDIES OF THE LIQUEFACTION OF SANDS UNDER CYCLIC LOADING CONDITIONS 2 A Report of an Investigation vy H. Bolton Seed and K. L, Lee to State of Californie Department of Water Resources 7 Report No. TE-65-5 University oftGalifornie 2 Berkeley, California * December 1965 CGRLIFORNIA RESOURCES AGENCY LIBRARY Resources Building, Room 117, 1416 - 9th Stroot Sacramento, Californiq 95814PART I LIQUEFACTION PHENOMENA IN SATURATED SANDS UNDER CYCLIC LOADING coNDITIONS Liquefaction of saturated sands during earthquakes has often been a major cause of damage to buildings and earth embankments. Nowhere is ‘this better illustrated than the severe building settlements and tilting which developed in Niigata, Japan during the earthquake of June 16, 1964 typical example of severe settlement and tilting resulting fron liquefaction of the sand underlying the foundations of buildings in this area are shown in Fig. 1. However severe settlement and lateral displacement of foundations due to soll liquefaction also occurred in ‘the Chilean earthquake of 1960,° and the Jaltipan? earthquake of 1959, while numerous slope failures due to liquefaction developed in the a r:—“‘“iOCOCOCOCOCOCOCOSCSC*sSCSCiézééstCS#séCéCis in 1957. While these cases serve as recent examples, similar cases of sand liguefaction were reported as long ago as 1783.” Japan National Committee on Earthquake Engineering, "Niigata Barth- quake of 1964," Proceedings Third World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, February, 1965. 2. Duke, C. M. and leeds, D. J-, "Response of Soils, Foundations and Earth Structures to the Chilean Earthquake of 1960", Bulletin Seismological Society of America, Vol. 63, No. 2, February, 1963. 3. Marsal, R. J., "Behaviour of a Sandy Uniform Soil During the Jaltipan Earthquake, Mexico," Proceedings 5th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Paris, 1961. 4, Grantz, A., Plafker, G., and Kachedoorian, R., "Alaska's Good Friday Earthquake, March 27, 1964," Geologic Survey Circular 491, Department of the Interior, Waskington. 5. Hobbs, W. H., "Earthquakes", published by D. Appleton Co., 1907.Fig.!— EXAMPLE OF FOUNDATION FAILURE AT NIIGATA. o ch (a) (b) (c) t (} Fig.2— IDEALISED STRESS CONDITIONS FOR ELEMENT OF SOIL BELOW GROUND SURFACE DURING AN EARTHQUAKE.The cause of liquefaction of sands has been well understood, in a qualitative way, for many years. If a saturated sand is subjected to ground vibrations, it tends to compact and decrease in volume; if Grainage is unable to occur, the tendency to decrease in volume results in an increase in pore-water pressure and if the pore-water pressure ‘puilds up to the point where it is equal to the overburden pressure, the effective stress becomes zero, the sand loses its atrength completely and it develops a Liquefied state. Liquefaction of a sand in this way may develop at any zone of a deposit where the necessary combination of in-situ condition and vibratory deformations may occur, Such a zone may be at the surface or at some depth below the ground surface, depending only on the state of the sand and the induced motions. However, liquefaction of the upper layers of a deposit may also occur, not directly as a result of the ground motions to which they are subjected, but due to the development of Liquefaction in an under- lying zone of the deposit. Once Liquefaction develops at some depth in a mass of sand, the excess hydrostatic pressures in the liquefied zone will dissipate by flow of water in an upward direction. If the hydraulic gradient becomes sufficiently large, the upvard flow of water will Induce @ ‘quick’ or liquefied condition in the surface layers of the deposit. Liquefaction of this type will depend on the extent to which the necessary hydraulic gradient can be developed and maintained; this, in tum, will be determined by the compaction characteristies of the sand, the nature of ground deformations, the permeability of the sand, the boundary drainage conditions, the geometry of the particular situation and the duration of the induced vibrations.The development of Liquefaction ina completely confined zone of sand at a large depth delow the foundations of engineering structures would in itself be of Little practical importance. However if the upward flow of water from such a zone causes Liquefaction of the over- lying soil on which foundations are supported, catastrophic settlenent and tilting of structures will develop. Methods of analyzing the pres- sure distributions in saturated sands during ané following Liquefaction have been presented by Naso (1957)° and ty Florin and Ivanov (1961).7 The latter authors pointed out that the possible movenents of structures in Liquefied sand are influenced by the time during vhich the sand is in a Lliguia state and presented an analysis for detemining the duration of liquefaction. Housner (1958)® has also analyzed the mechanism of sand movenent from @ deep liquefied layer to the ground surface. While studies of this type are essential for developing « full under- standing of the mechanics by hich a Liquefied zone may be extended and subsequently stabilized and for studying the time-dependent aspects of the problem, it is apparent that liquefaction will not occur at all unless st ig initially indueea ty the ground motions or @isplacenents to which a saturated send is subjected. It is of major importance, therefore, to establish the conditions resulting in the onset of Liquefaction and it is with this phase of the problem that the present report is concerned. 6. Maslov, N. N., "Questions of Seismic Stability of Submerged Sanay Foundations and Structures," Proceedings lth Internationel Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundetion Engineering, london, 1957- 7. Florin, ¥. A. and Ivanov, P. L., “Liquefaction of Saturated Sandy Soils," Proceedings 5th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Paris, 1961. 8. Housner, G. W., "The Mechanism of Sand Blows," Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 48, Apri, 1958.Previous Studies of Conditions Producing Liquefaction Probably the first attempt to delineate conditions under which Liquefaction might occur was the "critical void ratio" approach sug- gested by A. Casagrande.? Tt was noted that during shear dense sands tend to expand whereas loose sands tend to decrease in volume; thus for any sand there will be some initial void ratio, termed the critical void ratio, for which no volume change during drained shear, and correspondingly, no pore pressure changes during undrained shear, will occur. It was reasoned, therefore, that sand deposits having a void ratio above the critical value and therefore tending to contract during shear, would, under undrained conditions, develop positive pore-water pressures which would possibly become large enough to produce lique- faction. On the other hand, deposits having an initial void ratio delow the eritical value would tend to dilate during shear, producing fa decrease in pore-vater pressure and a corresponding increase in effective stress under undrained conditions, so that high strength and stability would be developed. It was subsequently noted that the critical vola ratio is not a constant value for a given sand but that it depends on the confining pressure to which the sand is subjected./° Since dilation tendencies are smaller at high confining pressures, the critical void ratio decreases as the confining pressure increases. Thus it has sometimes 9. Casagrande, A., "Characteristics of Cohesionless Soils Affecting the Stability of Slopes and Barth Fills,” Journal Boston Society of Civil Engineers, January, 1936. 10. Casagrande, A., "The Shearing Resistance of Soils and its Relation to the Stability of Barth Dams," Proceedings of the Soils and Foundation Conference of the U. S. Engineer Department, June, 1938.