Liquefaction potential assessment of saturated loess

Usually, soils with mainly fine grain-sized content, as loess, are considered to have low liquefaction potential. Regardless of this, many researchers have analyzed and presented much field evidence that silty soil (in particular loess) liquefaction occurred under certain conditions. In Bulgaria, the first loess river terrace (T₁) within the Danube River lowland areas is covered by low plasticity silty loess with a thickness of 10–12 m. Тhe groundwater level is often located between 5 m and 8 m in depth so that substantial part of loess deposits are saturated and immersed. Meanwhile, that region of North Bulgaria is under the influence of the Vrancea seismic zone in  Romania, which is able to generate strong earthquakes with magnitudes M≥7.0. The present paper aims to assess the liquefaction potential of loess in a ground profile representative of the T₁ loess river terraces by the so-called simplified procedure based on SPT, which is incorporated in the software code NovoLiq. The safety factor against liquefaction FSL is estimated at the respective depths in one-dimensional model of the ground profile for free-field conditions at varying peak ground accelerations a_max. The critical a_max, at which liquefaction of loess is possible according to the assumptions of the applied simplified procedure and the requirements of the National Annex of Bulgaria to Eurocode 8, has been established.