Earthquake demand energy attenuation model for liquefaction potential assessment

This study introduces an attenuation model based on the strain energy approach for estimating earthquake demand energy (EDE) to evaluate soil liquefaction potential. A new method is presented to estimate the EDE at a free-field site when only one record of the ground surface acceleration is available. This method was generated after analyzing the earthquake data of 18 downhole arrays in California. The developed method was later employed for calculating the EDE values of 328 earthquake records worldwide. Results showed that several parameters affected the EDE amount, including earthquake magnitude, faulting mechanism, site-to-source distance, shear wave velocity, and peak ground acceleration (PGA). These parameters were categorized by three main functions including source, distance, and site effect functions. An attenuation model was incorporated as a result of these three functions. Finally, the demand energy of two liquefaction array sites-Port Island (PI) site in Japan and Wildlife Liquefaction Array (WLA) site in California-were predicted by the proposed attenuation model and compared to the calculated capacity energies of these sites with satisfactory results.