October 2026 : Shear Strength of Liquefied Soil: Updates and New Developments Webinar

Includes a Live Web Event on 10/08/2026 at 11:30 AM (MDT)

The shear strength of liquefied soil is a crucial input to both static and seismic liquefaction analysis of many water-retaining dams, tailings storage facilities, and flood-control dikes. Despite this importance, this parameter often is estimated using empirical or semi-empirical (i.e., incorporating critical state soil mechanics concepts) correlations and very few efforts have been made to systematically increase the number of available case histories. In this talk, Prof. Olson will highlight the collection and expansion of the case history database of liquefaction flow failures, will describe efforts to better incorporate theoretical considerations into case history-based correlations for liquefied shear strength, and will describe recent novel experiments conducted to expand the data available to develop empirical and semi-empirical correlations to estimate liquefied shear strength.

Scott M. Olson Ph.D., P.E.

Professor

University of Illinois

Scott M. Olson, PhD, PE is an Associate Head, Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Faculty Excellence Scholar in the CEE Department at the University of Illinois, where he joined the faculty in 2004. Prior to joining Illinois, Scott worked in practice for Woodward-Clyde Consultants and URS Corporation. Prof. Olson has researched static and seismic liquefaction for 30+ years, and has been involved in dozens of research projects, consulting activities, and review boards involving liquefaction evaluation; geotechnical earthquake engineering; tailings dam engineering; in situ, laboratory, and centrifuge testing, soil-foundation-structure interaction; and paleoliquefaction and geohazards analysis. From these activities, Scott has published over 180 journal papers, conference articles, and reports, and has received numerous awards. Prof. Olson serves in various capacities for USSD and the ASCE Geo-Institute, and he is a Founding and Steering Committee member of TAILENG and serves on the advisory board for GEER.