Liquefaction of Highly Saturated Sand Layer under Oscillating Water Pressure

In this paper the vertical distribution of pore water pressure in the highly saturated sand layer under the oscillating water pressure are treated theoretically and experimentally. By the experiments it is shown that the water pressure acting on the sand surface propagates into the sand layer with the damping in amplitude and the lag in phase, and that the liquefaction, the state that the effective stress becomes zero, occurs under certain conditions. These experimental results are explained fairly well by the same theoretical treatment as for the ground water problems in the elastic aquifer. The main characteristics of liquefaction clarified by the analysis are as follows. 1) The depth of the liquified layer increases with the increase of the amplitude and the frequency of the oscillating water pressure. 2) The increase of the volume of the water and the air in the layer increases the liquified depth. Especially the very small amount of the air affects the liquefaction significantly. 3) The liquified depth decrease rapidly with the increase of the compressibility coefficient of the sand. 4) In the range beyond a certain value of the permeability coefficient the liquified depth decrease with the increase of the coefficient.