Sustainable Practices in Mitigating Liquefaction-Induced Foundation Settlements: A Focus on Carbon Footprint Reduction During Sheet Pile Design-PPT Presentation

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The study evaluated full-length (FL) and partial floating sheet piles (PFS) as measures to reduce earthquake-induced foundation settlement and examined their embodied carbon footprint. The research was motivated by severe damage to shallow-founded buildings during earthquakes, including the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.<br /><br />Shake-table experiments modeled a shallow foundation and superstructure on liquefiable soil. The tests compared an untreated baseline with FL and PFS mitigation under input motion targeting 0.53g acceleration. Researchers calculated embodied carbon using material quantity and a carbon factor, considering only cradle-to-gate life-cycle stages (Modules A1–A3).<br /><br />Both sheet-pile approaches substantially reduced foundation movement. FL reduced settlement by 73% and tilting by 98% compared with the baseline. PFS reduced settlement by 62.5% and tilting by 95%. Thus, PFS performance was somewhat lower, with reductions 10.5 percentage points lower for settlement and 3 points lower for tilting than FL.<br /><br />PFS required 8.6% less material and produced a 9.4% reduction in embodied carbon, while maintaining broadly similar settlement and tilt mitigation. The results indicate a potential trade-off: PFS offers carbon savings with only a moderate decrease in performance relative to FL.<br /><br />The investigation focused solely on sheet piles and counted only cradle-to-gate emissions. Future work could compare other mitigation measures and include additional life-cycle stages for a more comprehensive carbon assessment.

Keywords

earthquake mitigation

foundation settlement

floating sheet piles

liquefiable soil

shake-table experiment

embodied carbon

cradle-to-gate

Tohoku earthquake

shallow foundation

carbon footprint