Liquefied Strength Ratio for Eight Laboratory-Tested Sandy Soils

Use of a liquefied strength ratio to estimate strengths for postliquefaction slope stability analyses assumes that the liquefied shear strength of sandy soil can be normalized by the consolidation stress. This implies that the void ratio versus log consolidation stress and void ratio versus log liquefied strength relationships are parallel (or nearly parallel, for engineering purposes). Laboratory isotropically consolidated and monotonically loaded triaxial compression test data for eight normally consolidated sandy soils were used to show that this assumption may be reasonable in certain effective stress ranges - for example, greater than 1 kg/cm2, for practical applications. The use of a strength ratio can facilitate postliquefaction stability and deformation analyses by representing the liquefied strength as a function of the preliquefaction effective vertical stress.