🚀 go-pugleaf

John Gilmer <gilmer@crosslink.net> wrote:

> It would not be much of a problem to put enough steel in the concrete to
> keep the building together during an earthquake.   The problem would be that
> when the ground starts to shake, the building will tend to sink into the
> ground until some part of the foundation hits bedrock.

Actually, what happens in liquefaction is simply what Archimedes told
us--the body sinks until the mass of material displaced matches the mass
of the object. You don't have to hit bedrock. Liquefaction only happens
in water-saturated granular material, such as fill or your typical river
flood plain.

BTW, in liquified water-saturated carbonate sand, the typical human body
sinks to the shoulders. In the Port Royal earthquake of 1693, those
unfortunates who didn't lift their arms as they sank could not
subsequently free themselves (once the shaking ends the ground becomes
solid again). Many of the corpses sticking up out of the sand were
foraged on by the suddenly-homeless dogs over the next few days.

-- 
gerard@hawaii.edu