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Retaining structures in waterfront areas are sensitive to seismically triggered liquefaction, leading to large deformations of the backfill and the retaining structure. The response of such systems depends heavily on the soil parameters, one of the most important being its relative density. This paper summarizes the key aspects of three centrifuge experiments performed at the Center for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (CEES) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2020 as part of the experimental campaign for the Liquefaction Experiments and Analysis Project (LEAP-2020). The three models reflected the same prototype problem of a rigid floating sheet-pile quay wall supporting a 3-m-deep liquefiable soil deposit, of loose, medium dense and dense soil relative densities. The three models observed the same building technique and were subjected to the same target dynamic input motion. 

The LEAP (Liquefaction Experiment and Analysis Project) is a continuing international collaboration to create a reliable databank of high-quality experimental results for the validation of numerical tools. This paper investigates the response of a floating rigid sheet-pile quay wall under conditions of seismically induced liquefaction, embedded in dense sand and supporting a saturated liquefiable soil deposit. The experimental challenges related to repeatability in physical modeling in such a soil-structure-interaction regime are also discussed. To this end, three experiments performed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as part of the experimental campaign for the LEAP-2020 are discussed herein. Models RPI_REP-2020 and RPI10-2020 investigate the repeatability potential in centrifuge modeling in the presence of soil-structure-interaction. Model RPI_P-2020 is the pilot test of the LEAP-2020 experimental campaign at RPI and investigates the effect of the wall’s initial orientation on the system’s dynamic response and soil liquefaction, as a possible “defect” in the model construction procedure. The three models were built in a consistent way, employed comparable instrumentation layout while simulating the same prototype and comparable soil conditions. The three models were subjected to the same acceleration target input motion, which was repeated across all three models with high consistency. 

The mean squared deviation between acceleration time histories (of soil-system test replicas) is expressed as a unique aggregate of three discrepancy measures associated with shape, phase, and frequency-shift. The shape-measure quantifies the deviations associated with dissimilarities in form and amplitude. The phase-measure estimates the deviations associated with differences in phase angle. The frequency-shift-measure quantifies the deviations associated with differences in frequency components. These measures were used to assess the discrepancies among six replicas of a centrifuge experiment of a liquefiable soil tested at six different facilities. A sensitivity analysis was thereafter used to assess the effects of input motion discrepancies on a liquefiable soil response. The conducted analysis showed that the acceleration response of the analyzed soil is more sensitive to discrepancies in input motion frequency than in phase or amplitude. 

A decomposition is used to express the mean squared deviation, quantifying the dissimilarities between time histories of input (or response) quantities of multiple replicas of a soil system centrifuge test, as a unique aggregate of three discrepancy measures associated with shape, phase and frequency-shift. The shape measure quantifies the deviations associated with dissimilarities in form and amplitude. The phase measure estimates the deviations associated with differences in phase angle. The frequency-shift measure quantifies the deviations associated with differences in frequency components. These measures are illustrated using simple synthetic motions and used to assess the discrepancies among six replicas of centrifuge input motion achieved at six different facilities. The conducted analysis shows that the proposed decomposition accurately quantifies the different types of discrepancies in input or response time histories. 

Twenty-four centrifuge model tests have been conducted at nine different geotechnical centrifuge facilities around the world as part of the international LEAP effort (liquefaction experiments and analysis projects). All of the centrifuge models represent a 4 m deep 5 degree sloping submerged sand deposit. The mean effective PGA of the input motion for all of the experiments was approximately 0.15 g and the mean relative density was approximately 65%, but the effective PGA’s varied between about 0.07 g and 0.3 g, and the relative densities varied between about 40% and 75%. The test matrix was designed to enable experimental quantification of not only the median response but also the trend and sensitivity of the model response to density and shaking intensity. Quantification of the sensitivity of the response to initial conditions is a prerequisite for objective evaluation of the quality of the model test data. In other words, a discrepancy between two experiments should be evaluated after accounting for the uncertainty in the initial conditions and the sensitivity of the response to initial conditions. For the first time, a sufficient number of experiments has been performed on a similar problem to provide meaningful quantitative evaluation of the trend between PGA, density, and displacement. The sensitivity is quantified by the gradient of the trend and the uncertainty of the trend is quantified from the residuals between the fitting data and the trend.