Lateral load on piles due to liquefaction-induced lateral spreading during one-g shake table experiments

A series of one-g shake-table experiments was conducted in a mildly inclined laminar box to investigate pile behavior during liquefaction-induced lateral spreading. This paper describes these experiments and presents preliminary results. A uniform lateral soil pressure that provides a best match of the measured peak moment profile was back-calculated for each pile. It is found that a different level of uniform lateral pressure is required for each case. In the case of piles within a thick liquefied layer, lateral pressure is significantly larger than for the cases of shallow strata. Back-calculated pressure from experiments with liquefied soil layers of 5.0-5.5 m was in the range from 20 to 40 kPa, considerably higher than some current analysis and design recommendations.