Effect of vertical seismic motion on the dynamic response and instantaneous liquefaction in a two-layer porous seabed

Abstract

The evaluation of seismic-induced responses in a porous seabed is a fundamental problem in geotechnical and coastal engineering. Although ground motions generally include both horizontal and vertical components, a majority of previous theoretical investigations assumed vertically propagating shear waves in a horizontally layered soil–rock system and simply ignored the effect of site response to vertical earthquake motion. In this paper, the dynamic response and instantaneous liquefaction of a porous seabed that is induced by vertical earthquake loading is studied using an analytical method. The seabed is treated as a two-layer poroelastic medium and characterized by the dynamic formulation of Biot theory. The analytical solutions for the response variables, such as induced displacement, pore pressure and vertical effective stress, are derived individually, and the mechanism of instantaneous liquefaction in liquefiable sediment is investigated based on the excess pore pressure criterion. A set of parametric analysis is performed to discuss the effects of seawater, the seabed and earthquake parameters on the seismic response and maximum liquefaction depth. It is worth noting that the properties of the surface seabed layer have a significant influence on the seismic response and, consequently, the potential stability of the seabed, which is important in the analysis of offshore structure foundations.