Abstract

Earthquake induced liquefaction can cause significant damage in the built environment. The reduction in stiffness and strength of soil during earthquake induced liquefaction can cause structures on shallow foundations to suffer large settlement and rotation, and light buried structures to uplift. The performance of structures with basements, which intuitively combines these two problems, is not understood.

A series of highly instrumented dynamic centrifuge tests were conducted to investigate the novel idea of using basement storeys to reduce liquefaction induced settlement of structures in earthquakes. This seminar will present the seismic behaviour of structures with basements observed in these tests, with focus on the effect of soil-structure interaction on structure stability, settlement, rotation, and isolation. In addition, data from an in-flight, miniature CPT device will be presented alongside soil displacements obtained from digital image correlation to provide insight into the effect of soil-structure interaction on the change in cone resistance before and after a sequence of earthquakes.