Recent Advances in Liquefaction of Fine Grained Soils

Paper reviews present literature recommendations on liquefaction of soils with fines starting with the experimental evidence previously published by the authors. The liquefaction behavior of silts and silt clay mixers was investigated over a range of plasticity index values of interest by conducting cyclic triaxial tests on reconstituted samples and their behavior was compared with that of sand. It was found that saturated silts with plastic fines behave differently from sands both with respect to rate of development of pore water pressure and axial deformations with number of load cycles. The results also showed that liquefaction susceptibility of silts shows a marked change with change in the values of plasticity index. For a PI range of 2-4%, the liquefaction resistance of silt was found to decrease with an increase in plasticity. Some recent criteria may be helpful in deciding the liquefaction susceptibility of fine grained soils. However, there is still considerable confusion in ascertaining their liquefaction susceptibility, based on simple field, and/or lab tests.