A fundamental procedure and calculation formula for evaluating gravel liquefaction

Field investigations following the 2008 Ms8.0 Wenchuan earthquake identified 118 liquefaction sites, most of which are underlain by gravelly sediment in the Chengdu Plain and adjacent Mianyang area, in the Sichuan Province. Gravel sediment in the Sichuan province is widely distributed; hence it is necessary to develop a method for prediction and evaluation of gravel liquefaction behavior. Based on liquefaction investigation data and in-situ testing, and with reference to existing procedures for sandy soil liquefaction evaluation, a fundamental procedure for gravel liquefaction evaluation using dynamic penetration tests (DPT) is proposed along with a corresponding model and calculation formula. The procedure contains two stages, i.e., pre-determination and re-determination. Pre-determination excludes impossible liquefiable or non-liquefiable soils, and re-determination explores a DPT-based critical N120 blows calculation model. Pre-determination includes three criteria, i.e., geological age, gravel contents, gravel sediment depths and water tables. The re-determination model consists of five parameters, i.e., DPT reference values, gravel contents, gravel sediment depths, water tables and seismic intensities. A normalization method is used for DPT reference values and an optimization method is used for the gravel sediment depth coefficient and water table coefficient. The gravel liquefaction evaluation method proposed herein is simple and takes most influencing factors on gravel sediment liquefaction into account.