The influence of overburden pressure on liquefaction potential

One of the important design considerations for structures situated on sand deposits is the potential for instability caused by the development of excess pore water pressure as a result of earthquake loading. A build-up of excess pore water pressure may lead to initial liquefaction. In this paper, to examine the influence of overburden pressure on liquefaction potential, equivalent loads of several buildings with various stories were loaded on a sandy soil deposit using the FLAC program. The pore water pressure ratio $r_{u}$ was defined for the program by a Fish function. Analyses showed that by increasing the applied loading due to building construction, the values of effective stress and shear stress in the soil mass increased, and this generally can be a factor to influence liquefaction potential. Furthermore, dynamic analyses showed that there was a shallow longitudinal area beneath tall buildings in which liquefaction potential increased due to stress concentration and high confining effective stress; generally, they can be named as the factors to increase liquefaction potential.