Midterm Exam Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering 05/02/17

explain very briefly:

1. What are the different types of body waves?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of seismic refraction survey?
3. What are the different types of damping in soils?
4. What is liquefaction?
5. Why does not liquefaction happen in high plastic clays?
6. Why does liquefaction rarely happen in gravelly deposits?
7. What is lateral spreading?
8. What is flow failure?
9. Does static shear stress increase the liquefaction potential of a sandy deposit? Why?
10. What are the advantages of CPT over SPT for liquefaction potential evaluation?
11. What is the effect of number of loading cycles on the shear modulus of a saturated clay
(explain)?
12. What is the effect of loading frequency on the shear modulus of a saturated clay?

Problems:
1. For a saturated soil Vs=200 m/s, sat=2000 kg/m3, b=1000 kg/m3 and dry=1400 kg/m3.
What is the maximum shear modulus?

2. (I) Determine Factor of Safety against liquefaction in a sand deposit at z=5.0 m with
NSPT=7 and dry=1400 kg/m3 , sat=1800 kg/m3 , amax=0.35g, M=7.5 , V s12  200 m / s ,
SPT Machine Energy Ratio (ER)=60% (assume that rod length coefficient CR=1.0);

(II) What is your best estimate for residual (liquefied) shear strength at z=5.0 m?

(III) If the thickness of the liquefied layer below water table is 10 m, find the post-
liquefaction settlement (you can assume CSR, and (N1)60 for the liquefied layer is, on
average equal to the CSR and (N1)60 at z=5 m).