A finite element analysis method for simulating seismic soil liquefaction based on a large-scale 3D soil structure model

The increasing volume of spatial data and advancement of computer/computational science raises the possibility of using large-scale three-dimensional (3D) soil structure models for large-scale seismic soil liquefaction analysis. However, such analysis is difficult due to the huge computational costs incurred by 3D multi-physical non-linearity. In this paper, we present an efficient finite element analysis method for soil liquefaction analysis using large-scale 3D soil structure models. Its huge computational cost was overcome by combining several high performance computing methods. As an example application, we used our method to carry out soil liquefaction simulations of a large-scale 3D model with a grid-form ground improvement structure. •A method for large-scale 3D soil liquefaction analysis is proposed.•High performance computing method best suited for such analysis is developed.•The method overcome the huge computational cost of the analysis.•Large-scale 3D liquefaction analyses using a soil structure model were performed.