Seismic Bearing Capacity Failure of Berms

Abstract Taiwan is located in the circum-Pacific seismic belt. Berms served as protections of riverbanks were all designed without taking seismic bearing capacity into account in the past. Therefore failures of berms occurred frequently even the magnitude of an earthquake was not large enough. For the long term stability of berms, an equation of seismic bearing capacity is presented in this paper. Such an equation has been proved to be able to capture seismic bearing capacity failure of berms in Taiwan.