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Seismic performance and vulnerability of gravity quay wall in sites susceptible to liquefaction

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Abstract

Recent strong seismic events have highlighted the high vulnerability of port facilities resulting in significant physical damages and important socio-economic losses. The most widespread source of seismic damage to port structures is often not related to the ground shaking itself but to the induced phenomena principally associated to the liquefaction of loose, saturated soils that often prevails at coastal areas. In this context, this study aims at the investigation of the influence of soil liquefaction on the seismic performance and vulnerability of typical port gravity quay walls. Different gravity quay wall configurations are examined with varying base width/height ratios. Two-dimensional incremental dynamic analysis is conducted for the soil-quay wall system, under effective stresses using OpenSees software, considering a representative set of fifteen real ground motion records as input ground motion at the bedrock. Two numerical approaches are applied to investigate the effect of liquefaction on its seismic performance and vulnerability assessment: the first one without considering liquefaction, while the second considers the effects of liquefaction. The damage measure is defined in terms of the normalized seaward displacement. Fragility and vulnerability curves are finally derived in terms of different intensity measures and compared with available literature curves. Results show the important role of liquefaction in increasing the seismic vulnerability of the typical port quay wall.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support by the project ‘‘Resilient, system-wide seismic risk assessment of port facilities. Application to Thessaloniki Port system’’ RESPORTS project (http://resports.gr/), funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) and General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) under Grant Agreement Number 754.

Funding

This study was funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) and General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) under Grant Agreement Number 754.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, PO BOX 424, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Stella Karafagka, Stavroula Fotopoulou, Anna Karatzetzou, Georgia Kroupi & Kyriazis Pitilakis

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  1. Stella Karafagka
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  2. Stavroula Fotopoulou
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  3. Anna Karatzetzou
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the conceptualization of the study. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Dr. Stella Karafagka, who also conducted the analyses using the open-source computational software OpenSees, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stella Karafagka.

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Karafagka, S., Fotopoulou, S., Karatzetzou, A. et al. Seismic performance and vulnerability of gravity quay wall in sites susceptible to liquefaction. Acta Geotech. 18, 2733–2754 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-022-01738-8

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