Effect of Soil-Container Friction on the Seismic Response of Geostructures in Centrifuge Tests

Accurate modeling of geostructures in liquefiable soils during seismic events is essential for understanding potential failure mechanisms and improving engineering design. Centrifuge modeling has been widely used to validate numerical simulations based on advanced constitutive models for soils.  In such simulations, friction between the soil and the container can significantly influence the distribution of stresses, potentially affecting the ability of the model test to represent a target prototype. As part of the Liquefaction Experiments and Analysis Projects (LEAP), over 80 centrifuge tests have been performed to investigate the seismic response of geostructures in liquefiable soils. LEAP-2017 focused on lateral spreading in mildly sloping Ottawa F-65 sand deposits, while LEAP-2022 examined the seismic behavior of sheet-pile retaining walls supporting liquefiable soils. Experimental observations, along with extensive element tests, were used to evaluate the capabilities and limitations of several advanced soil constitutive models in numerical simulations of LEAP boundary value problems.This study specifically examines the influence of soil-container friction. First, the effect of friction is analyzed in the context of LEAP-2017. Second, its impact on the seismic response of sheet-pile retaining walls is assessed through numerical simulations of LEAP-2022. Differences in centrifuge container widths across participating facilities (ranging from 4.8 m to 8 m) are also considered. Three-dimensional simulations incorporating a friction angle of 9° indicated that soil-container friction restrains lateral displacements by approximately 9% in 8 m-wide containers, with narrower containers producing displacement reductions up to 17%. These results demonstrate the importance of accounting for soil-container friction when interpreting centrifuge test results and calibrating numerical models for seismic analyses of geostructures.