Assessing liquefaction-induced lateral spreads using CPT cases from the Christchurch, New Zealand, Earthquakes

During past strong earthquakes, liquefaction-induced ground movements such as settlements and lateral spreads have caused considerable damages to buildings, bridges, and lifelines. Assessment of such ground movements is of great interest to engineers. This paper focuses on the subject of liquefaction-induced lateral spreads. An evaluation of the existing methods for predicting lateral spreads with the newly compiled dataset from the more recent earthquakes is desirable. In this paper, we compiled case histories of lateral spreads from two major events of the 2010-2011 Canterbury/Christchurch Earthquake Sequence. These cases were assessed from raw data and compiled into a database of lateral spread cases with seismic parameters (moment magnitude and PGA) and soil data (primarily consisting of CPTs). The newly compiled cases were used to evaluate the performance of the existing empirical methods. The results show large scatter in the plot of the predicted versus observed lateral displacements, although the general trend is quite satisfactory.