Liquefaction and cyclic softening potential of soils – a unified piezocone penetration testing-based approach

Simplified procedures have been widely accepted and used in practice for assessing cyclic liquefaction resistance of sands. Extension of the simplified procedures for assessing liquefaction resistance of fine-grained soils has not achieved the same degree of success. It would be ideal to have a unified model that is based on in situ testing and is applicable to both sand-like and clay-like soils. This note examines one such model and extends its use to both sand-like and clay-like soils. Herein, verification of this unified model using field data from Adapazari, Turkey after the 1999 earthquake is documented along with comparisons with existing models. Satisfactory results are obtained, which shows that the proposed piezocone penetration test (CPTu)-based model is applicable to both sand-like and clay-like soils.