Numerical investigation of liquefaction susceptibility of sands considering fabric effects

Abstract

Natural soil deposits may possess a highly anisotropic nature. The fabric anisotropy of soils which is induced during the soil formation process can lead to severe variation in field scale responses. Although the influence of fabric on the response of sands is well known and several advanced constitutive models have been developed to account for it, most of the studies incorporating anisotropy have focused on element test simulations while practical boundary value problem simulations are usually omitted. In this paper, the undrained response and liquefaction resistance of anisotropic sand deposits with different inherent fabric anisotropies are numerically investigated through element test simulations and one-dimensional nonlinear effective stress site response analyses. A novel semi-micromechanical constitutive model accounting for the effect of fabric anisotropy on sand liquefaction has been incorporated into a fully coupled dynamic in-house code employing the u-p formulation. The proposed numerical framework shows that, in both element test simulations and site response analyses, the fabric effects stemming from both the inherent and induced anisotropies can significantly influence the liquefaction resistance of sands.