In performance-based earthquake engineering, simulated earthquake ground motions are often generated for time history analyses of structures and geotechnical systems. Liquefaction refers to dramatic loss of stiffness and strength of soils during earthquake shaking. As a complicated nonlinear process associated with accumulation of excessive pore pressure and decrease of effective stress due to soil-fluid interaction, whether synthetic motions can be appropriately used in liquefaction assessment still remains a grand challenge. In this study, various synthetic ground motions are generated using different simulation techniques, whose performances are compared with real recorded motions through nonlinear time history analyses of liquefiable grounds with different soil densities and ground inclinations. One-to-one comparison of results in this study clearly demonstrates the importance of preserving accumulative intensity measures of synthetic motions in liquefaction assessment. Strong linear relationships are also found in a log-log space between the maximum ground displacement and evolutionary Arias intensity during post-liquefaction stage for different liquefiable grounds, and the predictive relationships seem not to be affected by the types of synthetic ground motions.

在基于性能的地震工程中，通常会生成模拟地震地面运动，用于结构和岩土系统的时程分析。液化是指在地震震动过程中土壤的刚度和强度急剧下降。作为一个复杂的非线性过程，由于土-流体相互作用导致过大孔隙压力的积累和有效应力的降低，合成运动是否可以适当地用于液化评估仍然是一个巨大的挑战。在这项研究中，使用不同的模拟技术生成各种合成地面运动，通过对具有不同土壤密度和地面倾斜度的可液化地面进行非线性时程分析，将其性能与实际记录的运动进行比较。本研究中结果的一对一比较清楚地表明了在液化评估中保留合成运动的累积强度度量的重要性。不同可液化地面在液化后阶段的最大地面位移与进化阿里亚斯强度之间的对数对数空间中也发现了强线性关系，并且预测关系似乎不受合成地面运动类型的影响。