Study on liquefaction of saturated silty soil under cyclic loading

Soil liquefaction is a major cause of site damage during earthquakes. Since Casagrande’s works, significant progress has occurred. But, most of these are applicable for sandy soils. So, based on the former research and the dynamic triaxial test, some questions are analyzed, including the mechanism of silty soil liquefaction and some factors, such as the clay particle content, the relative density and the structure of the soil, which impact on the liquefaction strength of the silty soils. The pore water pressure is also studied. Considering that the number of cyclic loading is non-continuous, a new applied model is proposed to evaluate the pore water pressure, which is expediently applied into the finite element method programs.