Abstract
This paper presents major preliminary observations on the liquefaction-induced damages in the Meinong earth‑ quake (ML = 6.4). The severe damages to buildings centered on Huian and Sanmin Streets in Tainan City where the places were reclaimed fsh or farm ponds with poor construction quality from many decades ago. To better under‑ stand the efect due to the soil liquefaction at these sites, the information provided by the in situ 13 Standard Pen‑ etration Test boreholes and 5 Cone Penetration Test soundings accompanying with the PGAs derived from the near seismographs was used to conduct the soil liquefaction evaluation by the Seed method (Seed et al. in J Geotech Eng ASCE 111(12):1425–1445, 1985) when subject to the Meinong earthquake. The liquefaction potential index (LPI) was then evaluated accordingly. From the results, it was found that the estimated damage severity was not consistent to the feld conditions if the local site efect was not taken into account. To better refect the site response in such sites, the sites’ PGAs in the PGA contour map were multiplied by 1.5 times to quantify the amplifcation efects due to the soft geological condition. In addition, the PGAs based on other simple approaches were evaluated as well for com‑ parison. Besides, the efects of fnes content and magnitude scaling factor were also discussed in this paper. After that, several common simplifed methods were also used to calculate the LPI when subject to the Meinong earthquake in order to evaluate the applicability of these simplifed methods.
