Abstract:Earthquake-induced sliding displacements of earth structures are generally evaluated using sliding block analyses that do not accurately model the seismic response of the sliding body or the exciting loads along the sliding plane. The traditional decoupled approximation introduced to capture each of these effects separately is generally unreasonable. A simple coupled analytical model based on the rules of resistant earthquake of sliding-isolated structures,which captures simultaneously the response of the sliding mass and the nonlinear stick-slip sliding response along the sliding plane,is presented. In this method,as the sliding is initiated,the sliding acceleration is substituted directly in motion equation as one loading item to get the increment of sliding displacement. The modified motion equation shows that high inertial forces can nevertheless develop in a sliding mass at the beginning of each sliding process because of the additional inertial forces resulted from the transient sliding acceleration,while the sliding surfaces might limit energy transmission. Moreover,the fundamental period of sliding acceleration is about half of the mean period of the input motion in the processes of sliding. The proposed Newmark sliding model is validated with Wartman¢s shaking table experiments of deformable soil columns sliding down an inclined plane. The correlation between plastic sliding displacement and the dynamic response of earth structures is evaluated,and comparisons are made between proposed and decoupled analytical methods with linear material properties based on results of sliding displacements and amplitudes of dynamic response in sliding direction through a deformable soil column and a practical retaining wall. It is shown that the differences between the two approaches are remarkable;the plastic sliding deformation can limit effectively the amplitude of dynamic response in sliding direction and the decoupled will lead to conservative results.