• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.57-65
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• 2007

Earthquake is one of the factors to affect the stability of geotechnical structures. Numerous past earthquakes have shown that earthquakes have taught that damage of soil structures could occur on fine soils as well as coarse soils. For that reason, earthquake-induced decreasing tendency for strength on both coarse and fine soils has been investigated using direct simple shear (DSS) tests in laboratory. Based on the testing results the decreasing tendency for strength on coarse and fine soils is clearly identified in terms of the concept of volume decrease potential and plasticity index, respectively. Most of the soils except the weathered soil have shown similar reduction tendency of strength with the increasing number of cycles. Liquefaction strength of coarse and fine soils appears to decrease with the increment of volume decrease potential and the decrement of plasticity index, respectively. Reduction of strength on the weathered soil is particularly remarkable rather than others, which might be owing to the collapse phenomenon. From the DSS test results for soils, proposed is a simple method to evaluate strength decrement with the increasing number of cycles, and it can help estimate decrement of strength with the number of cycles easily.