Abstract Liquefaction-induced lateral spreading of the foundation soil severely damages the embankment resting on it. Installation of sheet pile near the toe of the embankment is a widely used technique to mitigate lateral spreading of the foundation soil and the associated damage to the embankment. However, several factors, such as the thickness of the liquefiable foundation, width of sheet pile, and softening of the bearing stratum, that may affect the performance of the sheet pile as seismic retrofit against lateral spreading has not been well studied yet. Therefore, a series of dynamic centrifuge experiments are carried out to study the applicability of sheet pile in various thickness of liquefiable foundation under moderate to strong sequential ground motions. It is found that the sheet pile effectively mitigates the lateral spreading of a thin as well as thick liquefiable foundation. Besides, the sheet pile having the same width of the target area performs equally as a wider sheet pile in mitigating channel-ward ground movement. The experimental results also show that the liquefaction-induced softening of the dense bearing stratum immediately below the loose foundation significantly influences the performance of the sheet pile.

中文翻译：

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板桩减轻路堤下松散土层液化引起的横向扩展的性能

摘要 液化引起的地基土横向扩展严重破坏了其上的路堤。在路堤趾部附近安装板桩是一种广泛使用的技术，以减轻地基土的横向扩散和对路堤的相关损坏。然而，可液化基础的厚度、板桩的宽度和承载层的软化等几个因素可能会影响板桩的性能，因为抗震加固对横向扩展的影响尚未得到很好的研究。为此，开展了一系列动态离心试验，研究板桩在中强连续地震动下不同厚度可液化地基中的适用性。结果表明，板桩有效地减轻了薄和厚可液化基础的横向扩展。此外，具有与目标区域相同宽度的板桩在减轻通道向地面运动方面的作用与较宽的板桩相同。实验结果还表明，紧邻松散地基下方的致密承载层的液化引起的软化对板桩的性能有显着影响。