Major Research Development of a new method for predicting liquefaction-induced ground subsidence and flow

In the cases of the 2018 Hokkaido Eastern Iburi earthquake and the Sulawesi Indonesia earthquake, the disasters apparently involved ground subsidence and flow caused by major liquefaction events in the regions' fine-particle soils that had high silt and clay content. Lead researchers of these disasters have been delivering pioneering results on a global scale in recent years, in the form of practical liquefaction prediction and flow prediction methods that take into account the irregular characteristics of seismic load effects and their durations. Meanwhile, a subsidence and flow prediction method that can be applied to liquefaction of various soils that have highly diverse degrees of granularity and plasticity is yet to be established. Therefore, it is necessary to explore novel prediction techniques to better understand and deal with the subsidence and flow mechanism of liquefied soils with wide-ranging levels of granularity and plasticity. For our FY2020 iteration of this study, the goal of which is to elucidate how subsidence and flow occur in liquefied soils with various levels of granularity and plasticity, we evaluated and analyzed the liquefaction and subsidence characteristics of soils with widely disparate levels of granularity and plasticity under various types of seismic loads such as continuous duration, irregularity, and continuous effects of seismic motions.

FY2020

FY2020

Sedimentation of silt and clay content caused by liquefaction-in-duced sand boiling (Top) Sulawesi earthquake (bottom) 2018 Hokkaido Eastern Iburi earthquake