Evaluation of Liquefaction Triggering Considering The Pertinent Uncertainties

Conventional design methods of geotechnical structures are usually based on limit state analysis and deterministic parameters. With regard to the uncertainties related to geotechnical materials, deterministic analyses do not provide accurate results. Hence, new design methods have been developed based on reliability evaluation and risk analysis to solve this problem. These methods are able to take into account geotechnical uncertainties quantitatively. Soil liquefaction analysis has been always among critical seismic geotechnical issues. Utilization of conventional methods has some deficiencies due to the complex soil behavior. on the other hand relationship between soil liquefaction and earthquake is also a probabilistic phenomenon. In this paper, it is tried to examine soil liquefaction potential with reliability analysis utilizing Monte Carlo simulation method. To illustrate the efficiency of this method, Loma Prieta earthquake 1989 has been considered as a case study. The results demonstrated that the reliability approach has the capacity of predicting the actual liquefaction phenomenon