This action is for support of a workshop whose objective is the selection of a geotechnical test site or sites for earthquake engineering research and for general geotechnical engineering research. Before the foundation of a building is excavated, the site is characterized by means of a morphological, geological, and hydrological examination. The process of exploring to characterize or define small scale properties of substrata at construction sites is unique to geotechnical engineering: In other engineering disciplines, material properties are specified during the design, or before construction or manufacture, and then controlled to meet the specification. Researchers in geotechnical engineering often require well characterized sites at which to perform experiments. Locating and characterizing these sites is very time consuming (and often too costly to justify a single inexpensive experiment) and usually the sites are used only for a single experiment. There is a need to develop well characterized and instrumented sites which are available as a national resource to increase research productivity and cooperation between research groups. The difficulty is in locating and deciding upon general purpose sites, and in planning for the maintenance, management, and long term funding of such sites. The purpose of this workshop is to address these issues, specifically to identify the best sites, define specific plans for the construction of structures and the provision of instrumentation, and prepare cost estimates for the development and operation of each site. The test sites will be used: (a) to study the phenomenon of soil response to dynamic loading, especially liquefaction, (b) to investigate: (1) the resistance of buried pipelines to earthquake shaking; (2) the seismic resistance of constructed facilities; and (3) soil-structure interaction phenomena (such as the performance of piles), and (c) to evaluate new tools for in situ testing, laboratory testing, and instrumentation . The report of the National Research Council on "Liquefaction of Soils During Earthquakes" recommends that the establishment of an experimental test site be explored.
