Last modified: 2017-06-10
Abstract
Seismic liquefaction is commonly observed in most of the large earthquakes. Settlement of structures, especially private houses resting on liquefiable soils has drawn continuous public concerns. The present study deals with the problem of structure subsidence through the framework of computational fluid dynamics. The liquefied ground was simulated using a viscous fluid model. The structure was modelled as a rigid body moving through the computational domain. Dynamic mesh method was used to reconstruct the mesh grid in order to avoid convergence problem due to invalidated meshes caused by structure movement. The volume of fluid method was used for free surface tracking. Furthermore, 1-G shaking table test was performed to obtain the subsidence behavior of a simulated structure resting a liquefied ground. The results showed that settlement of structure obtained from the proposed numerical model was comparable with the measured settlement from shaking table test. It is therefore suggested that the proposed method could be used for assessment of house settlement problems in liquefaction prone regions.