Identification and modeling of earthquake ground response — II. Site liquefaction

Downhole records of seismically-induced soil liquefaction are a valuable source of information on the associated mechanisms of stiffness degradation and lateral spreading. In this paper, free-field downhole array seismic records are employed to identify and model the recorded response at Wildlife Refuge (California, USA) and Port Island (Kobe, Japan) sites. The Wildlife Refuge site was instrumented in 1982 with a two-accelerometer array and six piezometers that recorded a case of seismically induced site liquefaction. At Port Island, a four-accelerometer down-hole array recorded strong motion during the recent 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquake. This earthquake resulted in widespread liquefaction and major ground deformations at Port Island. Using the recorded downhole accelerations at these two sites, the actual seismic shear stress-strain histories are directly evaluated. These histories provide valuable insight into the mechanisms of site liquefaction and associated loss of stiffness and strength. Based on the identified dynamic soil behaviors, computational simulations of the observed seismic response are performed. Optimization techniques are employed to estimate the necessary computational modeling parameters. This document constitutes the second part of a set of two companion papers about site amplification and liquefaction.