Characterizing the effects of fines on the liquefaction resistance of silty sands

Abstract

Recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan indicate that evaluating the liquefaction potential of silty sands remains an area of difficulty and uncertainty in geotechnical engineering. This paper presents a comprehensive experimental study along with analysis and interpretation in the framework of critical state soil mechanics, with the aim to address the complicated effects of fines. Two series of sand-silt mixtures, formed by mixing two different base sands with the same type of non-plastic silt, were tested under a range of packing density, confining pressure and silt content, and a unified correlation was established between the cyclic resistance and the state parameter that collectively accounts for the effect of packing density and confining pressure. The proposed correlation is independent of packing density, confining pressure, fines content and base sand, and allows prediction of the cyclic resistance of silty sands under different states. Furthermore, the mechanism of the fines-content induced reduction of cyclic resistance and the mechanism of the base-sand effect observed from the tests are elaborated in the sound theoretical context. The present study suggests that the critical state soil mechanics is a rational and appealing framework for liquefaction analysis of both clean and silty sands.