Specific Energy as Indicator of Liquefaction in Dynamic Centrifuge Experiments

In dynamic centrifuge experiments concerned with liquefiable soils it is important to understand the extent of liquefaction caused by the imposed ground motion. Currently this is achieved through instrumentation that only provides data locally at the measurement location. Image analysis through particle image velocimetry (PIV) is a powerful technique to obtain displacement data across an extensive region of soil and the paper presents a procedure to obtain accurate liquefaction maps from PIV by introducing a new property called specific energy. Specific energy is a versatile and simple parameter which can be derived from either PIV or accelerometer data. Furthermore, it can be used to understand experimental data for which conventional arguments may not be sufficient.