Constitutive modeling of cyclic mobility and implications for site response

摘要

Significant advances have been made in understanding the response of liquefiable soils to cyclic loading in recent years. These advances have led to improved techniques for modeling of the mechanics of these soils. Recent constitutive models allows consideration of phase transformation behavior, an aspect of liquefiable soil behavior that has been observed in laboratory and, more recently, field records. However, the practial significance of such phenomena for typical geotechnical earthquake engineering problems has been questioned by a number of practitioners. This paper presents a brief review of soil liquefaction and constitutive modeling techniques to investigate the practical significance of phase transformation behavior. Analyses using models that do and do not represent phase transformation behavior indicate that it's effect is important, from the standpoint of both site response and permanent deformantions. The response, however, is sensitive to details of model development and calibration and the reliability of a priori predictions has not been established.