Liquefaction of fine-grained soils from cyclic dss testing

John P. Sully, Ender J. Parra, Gordon Fung, Haroon Bux, Paul A. Sully

In the proceedings of: GEO2011: 64th Canadian Geotechnical Conference, 14th Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, 5th Pan-American Conference on Teaching and Learning of Geotechnical Engineering

Session: Laboratory Testing

ABSTRACT: Generally accepted methods used to evaluate the potential for liquefaction have been developed primarily for clean sands or silty sands with up to about 35% fines content. As the fines content increases in sand, the in situ penetration test data is corrected in an attempt to compensate for the effect of fines content on the penetration resistance of the sand. Correction methods have been proposed for both SPT and CPT data. Where the silt content of sand is higher than 35%, correction factors do not appear to adequately reflect the increased resistance to liquefaction. Under these conditions, the generally accepted procedure is to base the assessment on laboratory tests. The paper presents the results of a series of cyclic simple shear tests performed on silty sands and silts from profiles in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. The test results confirm that the increased resistance to liquefaction may not be adequately represented by the correction methods proposed for in situ penetration data.

RESUMEN: El enfoque normal para evaluar la resistencia a la licuacion se basa en la ejecucion de ensayos de penetration en campo. Sin embargo, se ha demostrado que la resistencia a la penetracion es sensible al porcentaje de finos en los suelos granular. Incrementos en la cantidad de finos causan una reduccion en la resistencia a la penetracion y una reduccion en la resistencia a la licuacion particularmente si el porcentaje de finos es mayor a 35%. La ejecucion de ensayos dinamicos de laboratorio es el metodo preferido para evaluar la resistencia a la licuacion para suelos finos. El articulo presenta resultados de ensayos dinamicos (DSS) realizados con arenas limosas y limos de la zona de Vancouver, British Columbia y la comparacion de resultados con el grafico basado en la resistencia a la penetracion.

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