Thesis Defense Announcement: Andrew Earl Parrott

The CEE Department is pleased to announce Andrew Earl Parrott's MS Thesis Defense: "Geotechnical Centrifuge Test of a Pile-Supported Wharf in Silt (Test AEP01)"

Date: Friday, February 7thTime: 12:00 PMLocation: CEE Conference Room (EB 202L)Advisor: Dr. Arash KhosravifarAbstract: "To investigate the seismic response of a pile system subjected to both inertial loading supplied by the mass of the deck and kinematic loading applied by the soil via ground deformations induced by liquefaction and/or cyclic softening, a large-scale centrifuge test was performed using the 9-m radius centrifuge at the Center for Geotechnical Modeling at UC Davis. The ground motions inputted into the centrifuge shake table applied a range of peak base accelerations from 0.1-g – 0.4-g. This model was constructed with dense sand at the top and bottom, a sloped rock dike on the north side, and most notably a large, deformable unit of natural silty soil obtained from the Willamette Valley. Model construction lasted three months, largely taken up by the gradual consolidation of the silt prior to spinning in the centrifuge. From the 120+ channels of collected data, analyses are planned to investigate the effects of inertial and kinematic loads appropriate for design in silty soils, as well as the effect of earthquake duration on these two loading factors."