Hilf Memorial Lecture in Geotechnical Engineering
4:00 PM • Friday 10/21
Engineering Classroom Wing
Past, Present, and Future Developments in Liquefaction Hazard Analysis
Steven L. Kramer, University of Washington
ABSTRACT: Liquefaction of soils has been widely recognized as an important cause of damage in many past earthquakes. Although recognized and named in the early 1950s (Mogami and Kubo, 1953; Terzaghi, 1956), liquefaction sprang to the attention of the geotechnical engineering profession in 1964 following large earthquakes in Niigata, Japan and Alaska. Since that time, a great deal of research on soil liquefaction has been performed, particularly in Japan and the United states but also in other seismically active countries such as Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Taiwan and Turkey. This research has led to breakthroughs in understanding of the basic mechanics of liquefiable soils, the development of practical, empirical procedures for evaluation of liquefaction potential, and the development of numerical procedures for site-specific analysis of liquefaction and its effects. More recently, the quality of the empirical procedures has been advanced by the cooperative interaction of researchers from these countries – it is now common to see teams of researchers from different countries collaborating on post-earthquake reconnaissance, empirical model development, validation of numerical tools and other activities that improve our collective understanding of liquefaction hazards and their mitigation. This presentation will review the history of liquefaction hazard evaluation, assesses its current status, and discusses future developments in this area.
BIOGRAPHY: Steve Kramer received his BS, MEng and PhD degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977, 1979 and 1985, respectively, and joined the geotechnical group in the University of Washington Department of Civil Engineering in 1984. His primary research interests include soil liquefaction, site response analysis, seismic slope stability and hazard analysis. Much of his current research work is in the area of performance-based earthquake engineering, specifically the integration of probabilistic response analyses with probabilistic seismic hazard analyses. Kramer has been the recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award from ASCE, a Walter Huber Research Prize from ASCE and the ASCE Norman Medal. He was named 2012 Academic Engineer of the Year by the Puget Sound Engineering Council and received the 2016 M.J. Nigel Priestley Prize from the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering. He is the author of the book Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and co-developer of the computer programs ProShake and EduShake. He was a senior research scientist in the International Centre for Geohazards at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) in 2003, and is also a member of the faculty of the European School for Advanced Studies in the Reduction of Seismic Risk (the ROSE School) at the University of Pavia in Italy. Kramer has served as a consultant to private firms and government agencies on earthquake-related projects in the U.S. and abroad.