Dynamic Response of a Levee System with Liquefaction Manifestations and Cyclic Softening in 2016

Meinong Earthquake

Yu-Wei Hwang1*, Chi-Chin Tsai2, Jiun-Shiang Wang3, Yuan-Chang Deng4

1,* Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
2 Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
3,4 Assistant Research Fellow, Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering Division, National Center for Research on Earthquake

Engineering, Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Two-dimensional (2D), effective stress, nonlinear, dynamic finite-element analyses were performed to model seismic-
induced displacements of Rixin levee in southern Taiwan during the 2016 Meinong earthquake. The seismic
performance of the levee system on interlayered soils was evaluated to identify the ground deformation patterns
associated with liquefaction manifestation of sandy soil and the cyclic softening of clayey soil. The simplified
subsurface at Rixin levee was characterized via available standard penetration test (SPT) and cone penetration test
(CPT) data, which consisted of a thick low-to-medium plasticity clay layer, overlaid by a liquefiable, sandy soil layer.
The PDMY03 and PM4Silt constitutive models were used to simulate the cyclic stress-strain responses of sand-like
and clay-like soil, respectively. Material parameters are calibrated by the available experimental data, CPT soundings,
and empirical relations. The one-dimensional (1D) input motion was obtained as the maximum rotated component
(RotD100 for peak ground acceleration) of two horizontal recordings at CHY058 station during the 2016 Meinong
earthquake. The numerical results showed that the maximum permanent ground deformation was localized at the free-
face of the slope and shallow depth of the clay layer, which was shown along with the critical slip surface from the
pseudo-static analysis. Importantly, the numerically computed damage state was consistent with the field observations.
These results point to the importance of considering cyclic-induced strength loss of clay-like soil on assessing key
engineering demand parameters of the levee system. Lastly, the PGV-based fragility functions (with within motion
variability) for crest settlement were developed to evaluate the seismic risk of the Rixin levee system.

Keywords: Levee, Liquefaction, Cyclic softening, Fragility functions, Geotechnical earthquake engineering

1 INTRODUCTION mechanism for this case history observation has been

previously assessed, it was still not fully understood.
The Meinong earthquake was a MW 6.4 crustal event
This was primarily due to the limitation and incapability
that occurred on February 2, 2016. The strong shaking
of the selected soil constitutive models that could not
caused serious damage to buildings and lifeline systems
well capture the accumulation of soil strains associated
in the urban area as well as the failure of
with the liquefaction of sand-like soil together with
levee/embankment systems along Tseng-wen River in
cyclic softening of clay-like soils during earthquake
Tainan City (e.g., Tsai et al. 2018, 2022). In particular,
shaking. Hence, in this study, the seismic performance
the flow-type failure was observed at the Rixin levee
of the Rixin levee during the Meinong earthquake is first
after the earthquake, similar to the liquefaction-induced
evaluated through nonlinear deformation analysis using
lateral spreads. However, it would be unlikely that
state-of-the-art numerical tools and soil constitutive
localized liquefaction in silty sand layer alone (most
models. Subsequently, the PGV-based fragility
common sedimentary material in Tainan City) would
functions are developed to evaluate the seismic risk of
have caused such catastrophic levee failure unless
the Rixin levee via a limited numerical parametric study
coupled with other failure mechanisms (e.g., Idriss and
considering the motion-to-motion variability.
Boulanger 2008; Kiernan and Montgomery 2020; Pretell
et al. 2021). The potential for the cyclic softening of clay
2 LEVEE FAILURE AT RIXIN SITE
was identified by Tsai et al. (2022) through a series of
sliding block and dynamic finite element analyses using Rixin embankment was built in 2010 after the Jiasian
the Mohr-Coulomb model and the hardening soil model earthquake (MW=6.3) to protect the bank along the
with small-strain stiffness. Although the potential failure Tseng-wen River from potential flood-induced failure.
The embankment height was about 13 m on average,
。
while the slope angle was approximately 15 with one
or two setbacks at the middle. The slope free-face was
covered by 30 cm thick unreinforced concrete slabs.
Soils consist of Holocene sedimentary materials,
including low-plasticity silt, clay, and loose to medium
dense sands with occasional thin silt interbeds. Serious
seismic-induced levee failures were reported after the
Meinong earthquake. The geometric mean of peak
ground acceleration, PGA, at this site was estimated to
be about 0.27 g based on the ground motion intensity
map from Tsai et al. (2022). Figure 1 shows one of the
damaged levee systems as the representative example,
where located at the intersection of Highway No.3 and
downstream of Tseng-wen River. The run-out distance
and the footprint area of the debris were about 55 m and
17,428 m2 (Tsai et al. 2018), respectively.
The site investigations performed by Tsai et al. (2018)
reported that no visible occurrence of liquefaction was
observed (e.g., sand boil) near the site and could not
determine whether the failure was caused by softening
of the clay-like material or liquefaction of the sand layer.
Further investigations and numerical analyses for the
Rixin levee failure (Tsai et al. 2022) indicated that this
flow-type failure was mainly attributed to the significant
strength loss in a saturated clay foundation during the
earthquake. However, the potential for water recharge
from the irrigation channel and the rice farm behind the
embankment (see Fig. 1) might raise the groundwater
table at the site. Hence, such catastrophic levee failure
may be attributed to the localized liquefaction of
uncompacted loose sand material at shallow layers
coupled with the softening of clay-like soil at deeper
layers. This hypothesized failure mechanism for the
Rixin levee case history will be further examined herein
via 2D, effective stress, finite element analysis.
Figure 1. Aria photo of the reference sites (after Tsai et al. 2018).
3 NONLINEAR DEFORMATION ANALYSIS
Two-dimensional finite element analyses were
performed in a parallel version of the object-oriented,
open-source, finite element, OpenSEES platform
(Mazzoni et al. 2006). The levee geometry and the
stratification of the soil profile were reported by Tsai et
al. (2022), but simplified for this example, as shown in
Figure 2. The simplified soil profile consisted of a thick
clay layer with normalized undrained shear strength
ratio, Su/’vo, as 0.4 (based on CPT soundings), overlaid
by a uniform sand layer with a relative density (Dr) of
approximately 55% [i.e., qc1Ncs ≈ 100 from CPT
soundings]. Note that the overburden consolidation ratio
(OCR) for the clay-like soil at the site was estimated as
2, according to Tsai et al. (2022).
Figure 2. Model geometry and boundary conditions
The PDMY03 (Khosravifar et al. 2018) and PM4Silt
version 1.0 (Boulanger and Ziotopoulou 2018, 2019)
constitutive models are selected to simulate the dynamic
behavior of saturated, sand-like and clay-like soils,
respectively. The PDMY03 parameters were calibrated
by using the cyclic resistance ratio (CRR) to trigger
liquefaction in 15 uniform loading cycles (based on the
liquefaction triggering correlation proposed by Idriss
and Boulanger 2008), while the PM4Silt parameters
were calibrated by CRR to trigger peak shear strain of
approximately 3% in 30 uniform loading cycles
(Boulanger and Idriss 2007). All the calibrations were
performed by using the single-element simple shear test
drivers, as recommended by Boulanger and Ziotopoulou
(2018). A summary of input parameters for PDMY03
and PM4Silt is presented in Table 1. The nonlinear
response of saturated soils was numerically simulated
using the stabilized single-point 4-node quadrilateral
element with the u-p formulation. The fluid bulk
modulus was 2 × 106 kPa at atmospheric pressure.
Table 1. Model Parameters for sand-like and clay-like soils.
PDMY03
Description Sand
Relative density, Dr (%) 55
Maximum shear modulus, Gfmax (MPa) 720
Peak friction angle, ’p (°) 30.3
0.012
3
Contraction parameters: ca, cb, cc, cd, and ce 0.4
10.25
0.5
0.3
Dilatation parameters, da, db, and dc 3
-0.3
PM4Silt
Description Clay
Cyclic stress ratio, CSRN=30 0.21
Undrained shear strength ratio, Su/’vo 0.4
Shear modulus constant, Go 1100
Contraction rate parameter, hpo 13
The groundwater table at the Rixin levee estimated
by Tsai et al. (2022) is adopted and illustrated in Fig. 2.
All the base nodes were fixed in the y-direction and tied zones where the relatively high initial shear stress
to have equal displacements in the x-direction (parallel distributed (not shown here for brevity). Cyclic softening
to the shaking direction). A Lysmer-Kuhlemeyer (1969) together with stress ratcheting resulted in the permanent
dashpot tied at the bottom-left node in the model was ground movement of this clay-like sliding zone greater
used to simulate the elastic half-space (with a shear wave than 80 cm. Observations from the baseline case
velocity of 760 m/s and density of 2.5 kg/m3). The lateral simulation indicated that the failure of the Rixin levee
boundaries were modeled using two free-field columns was mainly attributed to (1) significant cyclic softening
to simulate the laterally infinite extended condition. within the shallow clay deposit; and (2) the liquefaction
The 1D input motion was obtained as the maximum manifestation within the thin, saturated sand layer.
rotated component (RotD100) for peak ground
acceleration of two horizontal recordings at CHY058
station (2.78 km from the site) during the 2016 Meinong
earthquake. This is because the response of the geo-
system is expected to be dominated by the direction of
maximum shaking intensity (Cubrinovski et al., 2003).
The input acceleration- and velocity-time histories as
well as the 5% damped acceleration response spectra, are
shown in Fig. 3. The input motion was applied as stress
time history at the model base after the levee system
reached gravity equilibrium and hydrostatic condition.

Figure 4. Contours of (a) permanent displacement magnitude

after shaking; (b) excess pore water pressures (EPWPs) at 14 sec
during shaking; (c) shear strain magnitude at the end of shaking.

Table 2. Damage level classification (Kwak et al. 2016)

Figure 3. Acceleration- and velocity-time histories as well as 5% Damage Crest settlement Description
damped acceleration response spectra at CHY058 station during level (cm)
the Meinong earthquake. 0 0 No damage reported
1 0-10 Slight damage
Moderate damage, small
4 BASELINE ANALYSIS RESULTS 2 10-30
lateral spreading
Figure 4. shows the displacement, excess pore water Severe damage, lateral
3 30-100
pressure (EPWP), and shear strain magnitude contours spreading
for the Rixin levee during/after earthquake shaking. The 4 >100 Levee collapse
critical slip surface that reached the lowest factor of
safety (as suggested by Tsai et al. 2022) is also illustrated 5 DEVELOPMENT OF FRAGILITY FUNCTION
in Fig. 4. The permanent ground deformation was FOR RIXIN LEVEE
localized at the free-face of the sandy slope and shallow The fragility functions for crest settlement of the
depth of the clay layer. For conditions considered, the Rixin levee were developed to assess the seismic risk of
crest settlement was numerically computed as 90 cm, this levee system. The ground motion database included
which was classified as damage level 3 (i.e., severe 74 shallow crustal earthquake recordings on outcropping
damage) based on the levee damage level classification rock (i.e., Vs,30 > 760 m/s), that span PGA = 0.09–1.12 g,
chart (see Table 2) from Kwak et al. (2016). This damage PGV = 2.5-128 cm/s, Ia = 0.02-20 m/s, CAV = 0.1-5 g-
state was consistent with the field observations, as shown s, and D5-95 = 1.7–32 s. Each pair of horizontal
in Fig. 1. EPWP generation was observed within the sand recordings was rotated to obtain the maximum rotated
layer below the phreatic level right after the strong (RotD100) PGA. Then, the RotD100 horizontal
shaking (≈14 sec), while the corresponding excess pore component of each motion was applied at the model
pressure ratio (ru) ranged from 0.4-1.0. This led to bottom for the subsequent numerical parametric study. A
strength loss within the thin, saturated sand layer, predictive crest settlement model that incorporated a
encouraging the accumulation of shear strain, as shown single ground intensity measure (IM) was developed
in Fig. 4c. On the other hand, the shallow clay-like layer (i.e., only considered motion-to-motion variability), as
experienced localized shear strains, coincided with shown in Figure 5. For conditions considered, the peak
ground velocity, PGV (in cm/s), was determined as the
optimal intensity measure for the predictive model based
on the efficiency and sufficiency criterion proposed by
Cornell and Luco (2001). The uncertainty of predicted
crest settlement ( 𝑆𝑛𝑢𝑚 ) can be characterized as a
lognormal distribution with a standard deviation of 0.53.
Figure 5. Crest settlement of simplified Rixin levee system
against PGV.
In a forward analysis, the probability of exceeding
threshold crest settlement (𝑆𝑡 ) can be determined as:
𝑃(𝑆 > 𝑆𝑡 |) = 1 − 𝜑[
ln(𝑆𝑡 )−ln (𝑆𝑛𝑢𝑚 )
] (1)
𝜎 required to characterize the seismic performance of a
To develop the PGV-based fragility functions for Rixin
levee, we simplified the damage level classification chart
proposed by Kwak et al. (2016), as following: (1) minor
damage for 0 cm ≤ S ≤ 10 cm; (2) moderate damage for
10 cm < S ≤ 30 cm; and (3) severe damage for 30 cm <
S ≤ 100 cm. The threshold settlement (St) for each
damage level was determined as the median value of the
proposed settlement range. Figure 6. shows the PGV-
based fragility functions for the Rixin levee. The result
shows that the damage level of the Rixin levee under the
Meinong earthquake scenario is likely to be classified as
a severe damage level, which is consistent with field
observations.
Figure 6. The PGV-based fragility functions for the simplified
Rixin levee system.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this study, 2D, fully-coupled, effective-stress,
finite-element models with advanced soil constitutive
model and appropriate numerical setup could roughly
capture the seismic performance of the Rixin levee
during the 2016 Meinong earthquake. The subsurface at
Rixin levee was simplified via the available SPT and
CPT soundings, while the soil parameters were
estimated by the available experimental data and
empirical relations. Details of subsurface
characterization, field investigations, and laboratory
tests were provided by Tsai et al. (2022).
Results from the baseline case provide insights on the
possible failure mechanisms at the Rixin levee during the
2016 Meinong earthquake. The estimated damage state
for the baseline case was in line with the field
observations. The localized soil liquefaction (even
within a thin saturated sand layer) along with cyclic
softening of clay-like soils could notably encourage the
accumulation of strains associated with shear failure, and
hence its permanent ground deformation (Note, however,
that the finite element analysis typically could not well
capture the volumetric strains near the point of
liquefaction).
The proposed PGV-based fragility functions (with
motion-to-motion variability) could successfully assess
the seismic risk of the simplified Rixin levee system
under the Meinong earthquake event. Further research is
levee/embankment system with interlayered soil deposit,
uncertainties related to the selection of soil parameters,
groundwater table levels, and ground motion
characteristics. Nevertheless, the Rixin levee case
history and the presented numerical simulation
recognized the contribution of clay-like soils to ground
deformation during earthquakes, which should be
evaluated on a case-by-case basis until more robust
design guidelines become available.
DATA AVAILABILITY
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this
study are available from the corresponding author upon
reasonable request.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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