Development of a Model for Liquefaction and the Study of the Propagation of Seismic Waves in Fluid Saturated Porous Media

这个研究项目将利用在各种力学学科中取得的进展，以建立土壤液化模型。土壤液化是一种现象，在这种现象中，土壤失去了类似固体的反应，发展成类似流体的行为，对建立在这种土壤上或其上的结构造成灾难性的后果。具体来说，它涉及到热机械框架的扩展，该框架已被证明在描述许多耗散系统（如非弹性和粘弹性体）方面非常成功，并且特别适合于描述从类固体到类流体行为的转变。将框架推广到包括土壤液化、波在地质和流体饱和介质中的传播等复杂现象，将使此类现象的建模与已研究的其他耗散过程统一起来。一旦该理论得到发展，它将被应用于与减轻地震危害有关的具体边值问题。

This research program will exploit progress that has been made in a variety of mechanics disciplines in order to develop a model for soil liquefaction, a phenomenon in which soils lose their solid-like response and develop fluid-like behavior, with catastrophic consequences for structures built on or of such soils.Specifically, it involves an extension of a thermomechanical framework that has proven very successful in describing numerous dissipative systems such as inelastic and viscoelastic bodies, and which has been particularly suited to describe the transition from solid-like to fluid-like behavior. The generalization of the framework to include a complex phenomenon such as soil liquefaction, and the propagation of waves in geological and fluid saturated media, will unify the modeling of such phenomena with other dissipative processes that have been studied. Once the theory has been developed, it will be applied to specific boundary value problems that have relevance to earthquake hazard mitigation.