ABSTRACT
Fundamentally speaking, however, soil consists of grains and does not fit the concept of a continuum. The phenomenon of liquefaction occurs because sand is a discrete material whose behavior is governed by the principle of effective stress and by dilatancy. This chapter discusses the mechanism of liquefaction and then proceeds to the mechanism of liquefaction-induced damage. It asserts that damage is associated with significant deformation and displacement, and that the concept of liquefied soil as a liquid makes it easy to predict the magnitude of ground distortion. Deformation and displacement of liquefied ground, which are considered here to be the essence of damage, are induced by a variety of driving mechanisms. The chapter illustrates that the volume contraction of loose Toyoura sand which is cyclically sheared under drained conditions. A stress-strain diagram shows that the amplitude of shear strain increases with the number of loading cycles, although the shear stress amplitude is held constant.
