Development of a Large Shaking Table Test for Sand Liquefaction Analysis

Abstract This article highlights the development of a large shaking table test for sand liquefaction analysis. Two soil containers of different sizes were fabricated. The first one was small (0.87 m × 0.87 m × 1.20 m) in which the reconstitution and saturation methods could be easily tested. The dry tamping (DT) method was used to fabricate a model specimen. The subsequent field measurements suggested that the DT method provided a good distribution of sand grains in different cross sections. Before supplying the model specimen with water, carbon dioxide was flushed to replace air bubbles. This helped in obtaining a good degree of saturation, later verified by a digital moisture meter. For a given inlet water flux, the recorded pore water pressure displayed a quasi-linear trend, suggesting a good internal void system. This reconfirms the effectiveness of the DT method to yield homogeneous model specimens. The second soil container was huge (4 m × 4 m × 2 m) and used to explore liquefaction behavior in real engineering dimensions. Flexible foams were mounted on the side walls to mitigate the boundary effect. Although the boundary effect still manifested itself near the edges of the container during base shaking, half of the model specimen underwent a correct simple shear condition. For further analysis, vane shear tests were carried out before and after the liquefaction test. It was found that the intermediate layer, in general, suffered from the most severe liquefaction failure.