Abstract

Natural and man-made hazards are often associated with very costly damage to civil infrastructure systems such as bridges, levees, dams, buried pipes, and buildings of all types. The lack of high quality field and/or lab data of soil response has eluded researchers and practitioners until recently and has thus hindered the development of reliable tools to predict phenomena such as site liquefaction, landslides and failure. Recent enhancement of physical modeling facilities (centrifuge & full scale) and advancement in sensing technology are leading to a new reality for testing and monitoring of soil-structure systems. This state of affair will eventually lead to a paradigm shift in the evaluation and modeling of the seismic response of soil systems. Physical modeling and computational simulations are destined to become more prominent than empirical approaches and will ultimately become the main tool for analysis and design of soil systems.

The results of two research programs utilizing physical modeling to simulate the hazards effects of two types of natural disasters will be presented. 1. The performance of New Orleans flood protection system during hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levees in New Orleans are considered the worst natural disaster in the history of the US, producing extensive loss of lives and economic impact. Current physical modeling activities supporting the rebuilding of New Orleans Levees will be also discussed. 2. Liquefaction induced Lateral Spreading Effect on Pile Foundations. The presentation will focus on advanced research currently being conducted jointly by researchers at RPI (small scale testing) & University of Buffalo (full scale testing) and its practical implications.