A high-fidelity seismic intensity measure to assess dynamic liquefaction in tailings




A high-fidelity seismic intensity measure to assess dynamic liquefaction in tailings


Deformation analyses of tailings dams under dynamic conditions require using earthquake records as input loading. These records must represent the local seismicity through ground motion power indicators denominated intensity measures (IM). The ability and accuracy to describe the characteristics of a seismic record play a fundamental role in earthquake engineering and damage assessment of geotechnical facilities. None of the existing IMs represents a robust enough predictor of a given seismic demand (e.g., residual displacements). Different signals may generate a wide spectrum of results, with various effects that could produce insignificant damage to global failure depending on the structure. Usual engineering procedures select a substantial number of records to overcome this limitation and develop a large set of numerical simulations to limit the results' uncertainty, which becomes a time-consuming approach. This paper presents a new high-fidelity seismic IM to perform a more accurate ground motion selection, which captures the spectral properties of the record for the frequency content that the dam does not filter. This IM represents a way to estimate beforehand a seismic demand, expressed, for instance, in terms of displacements.



Nicolas Labanda; Roberto Cier; Mauro Sottile


10th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE2023)



4. Geotechnical earthquake engineering



https://doi.org/10.53243/NUMGE2023-17