• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.127-140
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• 2004

Conventional methods for the assessment of liquefaction potential were primarily for areas of severe earthquake zones (M=7.5) such as North America and Japan. Detailed earthquake related researches in Korea started in 1997, including development of the seismic design standards for port and harbour structures, which was later completed in 1999. Because most contents in the guidelines were quoted through literature reviews from North America and Japan, which are located in strong earthquake region, those are not proper in Korea, a moderate earthquake region. This requires further improvement of the present guidelines. Considering earthquake hazard data in Korea, use of laboratory tests based on irregular earthquake motion appears to be effective to reflect the dynamic characteristics of soil more realistically than those using simplified regular loading. In this study, cyclic triaxial tests using irregular earthquake motions are performed with different earthquake magnitudes, relative densities, and fines contents. Assessment of liquefaction potential in moderate earthquake regions is discussed based on various laboratory test results. Effects of these components on dynamic behavior of soils are discussed as well. From the test results, screening limits and magnitude scaling factors to determine the soil liquefaction resistance strength in seismic design were re-investigated and proposed using normalized maximum stress ratios under real irregular earthquake motions.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.3 s.49
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• pp.125-134
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• 2006

Conventional methods for the assessment of liquefaction potential were primary for severe earthquake regions $(M{\geq}7.5)$ such as North America and Japan. In Korea, an earthquake related research has started in 1997, but most contents in the guidelines were still quoted from literature reviews of North America and Japan, which are located in strong earthquake region. Those are not proper in a moderate earthquake regions including Korea. Also the equivalent uniform stress concept (Seed & Idriss, 1971) using regular sinusoidal loading which is used, in a conventional method for the assessment of liquefaction potential, can't reflect correctly the dynamic characteristics of real irregular earthquake motions. In this study, cyclic triaxial tests using irregular earthquake motions are performed with different earthquake magnitudes, relative densities, and fines contents. Assessment of liquefaction potential in moderate earthquake regions is discussed based on various laboratory test results. From the results, screening limits in seismic design were re-investigated and proposed using normalized maximum stress ratios under real irregular earthquake motions. Also from the tests using constant wedge loading and incremental wedge loading, the characteristics of liquefaction resistance of saturated sand under irregular ground motions are investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.38 no.12
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• pp.91-101
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• 2022

The 1995 Kobe earthquake caused a massive damage to the Port of Kobe. Therefore, it was pointed out that it was impossible to design port structures for Level II (Mw 6.5) earthquakes with quasi-static analysis and Allowable Stress Design methods. In Japan and the United States, where earthquakes are frequent, the most advanced design standards for port facilities are introduced and applied, and the existing seismic design standards have been converted to performance-based design. Since 1999, the Korean Port Seismic Design Act has established a definition of necessary facilities and seismic grades through research on facilities that require seismic design and their seismic grades. It has also established a performance-based seismic design method based on experimental verification. In the performance-based seismic design method of the breakwater proposed in this study, the acceleration time history on the surface of the original ground was subjected to a fast Fourier transform, followed by a filter processing that corrected the frequency characteristics corresponding to the maximum allowable displacement with respect to performance level of the breakwater and the filtered spectrum. The horizontal seismic coefficient for the equivalent static analysis considering the displacement was calculated by inversely transforming (i.e., subjected to an inverse fast Fourier transform) into the acceleration time history and obtaining the maximum acceleration value. In addition, experiments and numerical analysis were performed to verify the performance-based seismic design method of breakwaters suitable for domestic earthquake levels.