A Comparative Study on Computer Aided Liquefaction Analysis Methods

Soil liquefaction is the phenomenon of temporary loss of shear of saturated cohesionless soil under the influence of vibrations caused by earthquakes. The extensive loss of lives and civil infrastructure system like buildings, bridges, highways etc. caused by liquefaction emphasize the need for strong and reliable methods for evaluating the liquefaction potential of sites. Simplified techniques based on in situ testing methods are commonly used to assess seismic liquefaction potential. Many of these simplified methods are based on finding the liquefaction boundary. Because of this importance, engineers developed various software programs to evaluate and model liquefaction potentials of sites. In these programs, the methods, properties, calculation types, coefficients and etc. differs from each other. In order to address liquefaction engineering, this paper proposed to focus on comparing the advantages and disadvantages of different software programs used to evaluate and analyze liquefaction potentials of sites based on different methods. In this paper, it is shown that to choose the correct software program is one of the key points in the liquefaction evaluation procedure. The definitions and the properties of all the liquefaction analysis software programs that are used in the engineering literature are search a part of doctoral thesis and the results are given as a summary in this paper. Also, a table that shows how to determine the correct method and program is formed to serve for engineers. Finally, in the future works, an analysis will be done to compare the site liquefaction potential results by using all the software programs.