ABSTRACT
In the past twenty years or so, numerous investigations on the centrifuge have been carried out to reproduce seismically induced liquefaction phenomena and to study their effects on the stability of such earth structures as homogeneous or stratified level ground, slopes, embankments, water front structures, sheet pile walls, buried structures, etc. In this paper, a review of some of these investigations is presented. A good centrifuge experiment is expected to produce repeatable, quantitative data. In seismic centrifuge experiments, close attention is required on such issues as generation of earthquake motions, simulation of boundary conditions, and scale effects such as particle size and the conflict in the time scaling for the coupled dynamic pore pressure generation and diffusive pore pressure dissipation phenomena. These and some other issues are also discussed in this paper, in the context of their effects on the study of liquefaction.
