Empirical models for estimating liquefaction-induced lateral spread displacement: Fid-Bau Portal

Empirical models for estimating liquefaction-induced lateral spread displacement

Zhang, Jian / Zhao, John X.

AbstractExisting empirical models for estimating liquefaction-induced lateral spread displacement (DLL) have been derived from a dataset poorly distributed with respect to earthquake magnitude and source distance, and also produced from different tectonic source types and faulting mechanisms. Both the poor distribution and mixed tectonic source types and faulting mechanisms of the data have an adverse impact on the reliability of the empirical models. To overcome these problems in the development of empirical models, we replace the direct use of magnitude and source distance with pseudo-displacement derived from spectral acceleration attenuation models that are well supported by earthquake data, and use a modification factor to account for effects of the non-linear soil response. Attenuation models derived from very large and reasonably well-balanced datasets have been selected, one being a Japanese attenuation model and other being a combination of the Sadigh et al. model and the Youngs et al. model. These models are capable of accounting for the effects of earthquake tectonic source type and faulting mechanism. We determined the model coefficients by selecting the pseudo-displacements calculated for a number of spectral periods to achieve an unbiased distribution of residuals with respect to earthquake magnitude and source distance. Sensitivity analyses have been carried out based on the new and existing models, and show that the new model is more robust than the existing models. Comparison with a limited number of data from the 1997 Kocaeli, Turkey earthquake suggests our model provides comparable liquefaction-induced lateral displacement DLL estimates.