Predicting lateral displacement of sand for mat foundation under simplified seismic loading

Abstract

This research presents the settlement factor of sand for the lateral seismic excitation considering various peak ground accelerations. For this reason, analytical formulations are proposed to calculate the settlement factor. A one-dimensional model is considered to derive these formulations, which is the simplified form of the three-dimensional model. The seismic excitation is simplified by considering only peak ground acceleration (PGA) for the development of formulations. The proposed formulations are verified by the previous numerical studies. Also, a parametric study is conducted to consider the variable parameters such as super-structure loads, mat thickness, PGA factors, and depths of sand. According to the verification results, the observed and calculated sand settlement factor variation rates are slightly higher because of the considerations for the development of the proposed model. The maximum value of the sand settlement factor is found to be 434 for the PGA factor of 0.36 at the highest depth of the sand layer. Also, the sand settlement factor is gradually increased with the increment of the depth for all cases due to the increment of the stiffness. The lateral sand settlement factor is varied within a range of (60 ~ 434) considering all PGAs of the lateral seismic excitation.