Performance-based probabilistic liquefaction-induced ground settlement procedure

Abstract

Performance-based procedures represent an improvement over current state-of-practice procedures that treat the assessment of seismic demand and engineering response parameters independently. Procedures used in current practice generally provide estimates of liquefaction-induced ground settlement that are inconsistent with the desired ground settlement hazard level. A recently developed probabilistic procedure to estimate liquefaction-induced ground settlement is employed to develop a new performance-based procedure that estimates ground settlement which accounts for key sources of uncertainty. The ground-motion intensity and ground settlement estimations are integrated in the proposed procedure to produce hazard curves for liquefaction-induced ground settlement. The hazard curve for ground settlement links different hazard levels with their corresponding values of ground settlement by evaluating a wide range of ground-motion intensities and site characterization parameters with their associated uncertainties. The proposed performance-based procedure also permits the evaluation of different sources of uncertainty and their effects on the ground settlement estimate.