EARTHQUAKE-INDUCED SETTLEMENTS IN SATURATED

A simplified approach is proposed to estimate the earthquake-induced settlements in saturated sandy soils. The simplified approach consists of a set of equations that can be used to estimate directly the settlements of a saturated sandy soil layer subjected to earthquake loading. The proposed approach is based on Tokimatsu and Seed (1987) procedure, but does not require the use of charts, tables and diagrams and hence it can be conveniently implemented numerically and allows the expeditious analysis of complicated soil profiles. It is particularly useful for sensitivity analyses and for analyzing soil profile with multiple layers. The proposed approach may be able to characterize the liquefaction boundary line that separates liquefaction from non-liquefaction regions. The proposed approach has been used to predict the settlements observed at two sites subjected to different magnitude of earthquakes. The settlement predictions by the proposed method are in reasonably good agreement with those computed by other published approaches and field measurements