A comparative study on the method of foundation soil liquefaction between Chinese and American codes of seismic design

作者：Zeng Fanzhen^*; Hou Jianguo; Li Yang

来源：Journal of Building Structures, 2010, 31(SUPPL. 2): 309-314.

• American standard
• Building damage
• Chinese codes
• Comparative studies
• Design criterion
• Design load
• Earth dam
• Earthquake engineering
• Foundation soils
• Influence factors
• Judging methods
• Nonuniform
• Research results
• Soil strength
• Standard penetration test

The foundation soil liquefaction leads to the loss of soil strength or stiffness, structural non-uniform subsidence, earth dam landslide and so on, which is one of the main reasons of building damage. On the basis of current standard GB 50011-2001 'Code for seismic design of buildings', combined with the 'NCEER' judging method proposed by United States National Center For Earthquake Engineering Research and American standard ASCE/SEI 7-05 'Minimum design loads for buildings and other structures' , this paper summarizes the methods of judging liquefaction between Chinese and American codes, and then calculates and compares the judging method factors and reliability about the foundation soil liquefaction in the two criteria. Finally an example analysis is comparatively performed. The research results illustrate that although the standard penetration test empirical judgments approach( SPT-N)has been adopted by the two codes, there exist many specific differences between the two codes. For example, American code considers more influence factors on the liquefaction, but Chinese code judgment tends to be conservative in some cases and unsafe in other cases, which may lead to very different judgment results between the two codes. This paper finally provides a number of suggestions to amend the method of foundation soil liquefaction of GB 50011-2001 and the relevant conclusions can be referenced for future code revisions.

• 出版日期2010