Liquefaction, which is the loss of strength of supporting soil, is one of the major causes of destruction to permanent infrastructure (roads, buildings, and bridges). After being introduced to the concepts of compaction, permeability and effective stress in an introductory geotechnical engineering course, undergraduate students understand the basic concepts of liquefaction. In this research, an apparatus was built to provide hands-on experience to undergraduates to provide them with a greater understanding of the liquefaction mechanism, liquefaction induced damage to the built environment and the influence of various soil properties that trigger liquefaction. A geotechnical earthquake engineering teaching module was also developed for use with the apparatus. Subsequent experimentation indicates that the apparatus constructed in this research successfully demonstrated the mechanism of liquefaction, liquefaction induced damage and the influence of soil properties on the extent of the damage. The proposed experiments are repeatable and the teaching module can be included as one of the many geotechnical engineering laboratory experiments. These experiments will give students hands-on experience in sample preparation, instrument use and testing with various earthquake time histories.
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