Soil-Foundation-Structure Interaction Effects on the Cyclic Failure Potential of Silts and Clays

Earthquake-induced ground failure has resulted in billions of dollars of damage during recent earthquakes. Soils can be broadly characterized as exhibiting either "sand-like" or "clay-like" behavior with respect to strength loss during earthquakes. This project focuses on cyclic failure of "clay-like" soils, which are less well understood than "sand-like" soils. Cyclic failure of fine-grained soils are often constrained to the regions beneath structures, and not in the free-field soils away from the structures, indicating that soil-foundation-structure interaction plays an important role. This project utilizes centrifuge model testing to study cyclic failure of fine-grained soils beneath structures. This research has produced publicly accessible datasets containing all of the experimental measurements and metadata required for users to make sense of the data.