SEE6 / 1 / IIEES Soil Liquefaction Potential Assessment Using Nonlinear Site Response Analysis Emad Gheibi 1 , Mohammad H. Bagheripour 2 , Amin Gheibi 3 1 Graduate Student in Geotechnical Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran. Email: emadgheibi@gmail.com 2 Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran. Email: bagheri@mail.uk.ac.ir 3 Undergraduate Student in Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran. Email: amingheibi91@gmail.com ABSTRACT Soil liquefaction is a major cause of damage during earthquakes. Over the past years, major advances have occurred in evaluation of soil liquefaction potential. This rapid evolution in assessment of liquefaction potential has led to a various methods for evaluation of this phenomenon. Although the rate of progress has been laudable, further advances are occurring, and more remains to be done. There are two types of known approaches available for this assessment: first, use of laboratory testing and soil surface response analysis and second, use of empirical relationships based on correlation of observed field behavior with different in-situ tests. Cyclic stress method, cyclic strain method and energy approach are the three known methods based on the result of laboratory tests. I n this research the proposed method is based on the energy approach and is able to evaluate soil liquefaction potential and factor of safety against liquefaction in each layer of soil deposit which because of the nonlinear site response analysis, leads to more precise results. Keywords: Soil Liquefaction Potential, Stress-Based Method, Strain-Based Method, Energy- Based Method, Dissipated Energy. 1. INTRODUCTION Soil liquefaction hazards is known as one of the most destructive and important phenomenon regarding Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering. Devastating effects of two earthquakes of 1964; the 1964 Niigata (Japan) and 1964 Great Alaskan earthquakes caused an engineering treatment of liquefaction hazards. The performed studies after these earthquakes led to the ability to assess the likelihood of initiation of liquefaction in clean, sandy soils. Evaluation of the soil liquefaction potential is first step for the most projects involving potential seismically- induced liquefaction. Four in-situ test methods are sufficient to assess triggering of liquefaction Six th International Conference of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering 16-18 May 2011 Tehran, Iran