Significant progress has been made in recent years toward a better understanding of the liquefaction phenomena. Yet, the combined effects of excess pore pressure generation, permanent soil deformation, and ground shaking, with and without mitigation, on the performance of the soil-foundation-structure system remain poorly understood. Moreover, there is a lack of physical model studies incorporating these important effects for a range of conditions to validate numerical models. This paper presents an experimental study of the performance of 3-story structures with shallow foundations on a saturated soil profile including a thin liquefiable layer. The influence of three different mitigation techniques was evaluated: 1) ground densification; 2) enhanced drainage with prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs); and 3) reinforcement with in-ground structural walls. Densification was observed to slightly reduce excess pore pressures and permanent foundation settlement and tilt, but amplified the demand transferred to the superstructure. Use of PVDs reduced permanent foundation settlement and rotation by reducing the duration of large excess pore pressures, but amplified roof accelerations and flexural drift. The performance of the stiff structural wall depended on the properties of the earthquake motion. During more intense, longer-duration motions, confining the soil and inhibiting flow inside the structural wall led to liquefaction, larger settlements, and larger translational and rotational accelerations on the foundation. In this case, the dissipation of seismic energy through additional foundation movements reduced the moment-rotation demand on the columns. These experimental results emphasize the importance of evaluating the potential tradeoffs of liquefaction mitigation, which may reduce settlement and sometimes tilt, but result in larger transient drifts and damage to the superstructure.

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The geotechnical construction industry is a major component of the overall construction sector and is strategically important in infrastructure development (transportation, flood and landslide protection, building foundations, waste disposal). Although industry and research in the overall construction sector have been investing significantly in recent years to produce innovative low-carbon technologies, little innovation has been created in geotechnical construction industry, which is lagging behind other construction industry sectors. This paper discusses the interplay between low-carbon geotechnical engineering and unsaturated soil mechanics based on the research carried out within the project TERRE (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks funded by the European Commission, 2015-2019,H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015-675762).