Evaluation of Liquefaction Potential in Saturated Sand under Different Drainage Boundary Conditions—An Energy Approach

Abstract

Drainage conditions are supposed to have significant influence on sand liquefaction behavior. An infiltration device was utilized in cyclic triaxial tests to reproduce different drainage conditions by altering dry density of the within silt. Permeability coefficient ratio (kp) was utilized for quantifying the drainage boundary effect. Cyclic triaxial tests were conducted on saturated Fujian standard sand samples. Test results were used to evaluate the liquefaction potential by using the energy approach. It can be concluded that, if kp increases slightly bigger than zero, excess pore water pressure (EPWP) will respond more fiercely, and the dissipated energy that triggers sand liquefaction will be less. By considering kp, an energy-based database was built by taking kp into consideration and different neural network (NN) models were constructed to predict liquefaction potential by energy approaches accurately under different drainage boundary conditions. It was suggested that the neuro-fuzzy (NF)-based NN model has more satisfactory performance.