Reliability-based method for assessing liquefaction potential of soils

This paper describes a probabilistic method for assessing the liquefaction potential of sandy soils. The proposed probabilistic method is formulated based on the results of reliability analyses of 225 field records, observations of soil performance against liquefaction. The results of the present study show that a meaningful mapping between notional probability and an actual relative frequency measure of the occurrence of liquefaction can be obtained with the proposed method. Twenty case records from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake are further analyzed to demonstrate the proposed reliability-based method. The developed method has the potential of becoming a practical tool for engineers involved in the assessment of liquefaction potential.