Practical Soil Dynamics - Case Studies in Earthquake and Geotechnical Engineering







Preface

Karl Terzaghi formally defined soil mechanics as a separate discipline by publishing

his first book in 1925. Although soil mechanics involves soil statics and dynamics,

only soil statics has become well established while soil dynamics remained in a

rudimentary stage until recent developments in the field of earthquake engineering.

Geotechnical earthquake engineering is formally defined as a new discipline by the

first international conference on geotechnical earthquake engineering held in Tokyo

in 1995. An essential part of geotechnical earthquake engineering is soil dynamics.

Engineering codes and standards have followed to some extent developments in

research in ground vibrations and earthquake engineering. Recent EN 1998-5 (2004)

provides norms and information on a limited range of subjects only such as topographic

amplification factors, liquefaction of levelled ground but not slopes, loading

on retaining walls but not reinforced soil and seismic bearing capacity of shallow

foundations but not piled foundations and not on soil-structure interaction. Such

limitations are understandable as codes and standards are based on best practice and

when a consensus on best practice is absent then codes remain brief. However, engineering

practice require acceptable solutions for many subjects not covered by the

existing codes. ISO 23469 (2005) use similar approach to EN 1998-5 (2004).

This volume provides information on the basic mechanisms and factors affecting

the behaviour of ground and buried structures in cyclic conditions in order to help

engineering judgement. The analyses are based on well known engineering principles

and methods that are familiar to many readers. The accuracy and precision

of the simple analyses are demonstrated for actual case histories instead of using

numerical analyses and laboratory testing, which have their disadvantages such as

complexity, high cost and long duration. The equations provided in this volume are

suitable for hand calculations.

United Kingdom M. Srbulov


Download
*