In the marine environment, the seabed contains a certain amount of clay. Experimental studies show that the liquefaction susceptibility of the sandy seabed increases as clay content (CC) rises to a certain threshold, beyond which further increases in CC reduce liquefaction susceptibility. However, numerical models that describe the effect of CC on seabed liquefaction are very limited. This study proposed a dynamic poro-elasto-plastic finite element method model for analyzing liquefaction in the sandy seabed with CC below the threshold. Based on a series of undrained triaxial compression tests on sand-clay mixtures from existing literature, a unified constitutive framework was demonstrated to be effective for describing the liquefaction behavior of sand with low CC using one set of model parameters. Existing wave flume model tests validated the effectiveness of the proposed seabed model in describing the effect of low CC on excess pore water pressure (EPWP). Numerical results confirmed that adding a small amount of clay to the seabed increased the soil contraction and thus its liquefaction susceptibility. Wave-induced liquefaction was limited to a certain depth of the seabed, and the liquefaction depth was significantly affected by the CC . Adding a low content of clay the sandy seabed significantly increased both horizontal and vertical displacements under wave action, potentially leading to the instability of the seabed. This study provides a new method for accurately assessing the wave-induced stability of marine structures built on the sandy seabed containing certain amounts of clay.

Marine structures are commonly situated near the mildly sloping sandy seabed characterized by the slope angles (alpha) not exceeding 10 degrees. The seabed liquefaction can be triggered due to the generation of the excess pore water pressure (EPWP), posing a threat to the stability of marine structures. This study focuses on the analysis of waveinduced liquefaction in the mildly sloping (MS) sandy seabed. A dynamic poro-elasto-plastic seabed model is developed to simulate the behavior of the MS sandy seabed under wave loading. The results indicates that the loading cycle required to trigger the initial liquefaction decreased as the position moved from the toe towards the crest of the MS sandy seabed. The amplitude of shear stress increases with the loading cycle and tends to increase with growing alpha before liquefaction, resulting in a slower accumulation of EPWP with larger alpha. Both the horizontal and vertical displacements induced by wave action reach the maximum at the crest of the sloping seabed. Notably, the horizontal displacement is much greater than the vertical displacement in the seabed under wave action. The displacement of the MS sandy seabed depends on not only the shear stress amplitude developed in the soils but also the accumulation of EPWP required to trigger the liquefaction in the seabed.

Open pit mines are large geotechnical structures. Their stability is an important consideration in the mining industry. The deformations of geotechnical structures often involve the coupled interaction between the pore fluid pressure and the nonlinear deformation of soil, characterised by poro-elasto-plastic behaviour. This paper develops the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) to address poro-elasto-plastic in slope stability problems. It builds upon a previously developed elasto-plastic formulation to consider the effect of pore fluid pressure and its interaction with the nonlinear deformation within the soil. The pore pressure field introduces an additional variable in the governing equations that is similarly discretised using SBFEM shape functions. The SBFEM is implemented together with a pixel-based quadtree mesh generation technique, enabling automatic meshing directly from digital images. This leads to efficient automation when modelling problems with iterative changes in the geometry such as in optimisation of construction processes during the rehabilitation of slopes. The formulation is validated first using a standard numerical benchmark. Application of the developed technique in construction applications in slopes where the stability and effect of pore water pressure is considered e.g., tailings dam construction and optimisation of backfilling process is demonstrated in three examples to demonstrate feasibility.