Abstract: In this paper, a large-scale shaking table test of the free field with the soil liquefaction was conducted under horizontal ground motion excitation. The temporal and spatial response of the free field under earthquake excitation was analyzed. The results showed that when the excited earthquake was small, the dynamic response of liquefiable site and pore pressure ratio at different buried depths of soil was small, whereas the peak acceleration from bottom to top enlarged. This indicated that the model foundation was in the linear elastic phase. When the seismic record of 0.3g Wenchuan earthquake was inputted, the pore pressure accumulated rapidly and the pore pressure ratio of the topsoil layer reached 1. The model foundation showed obvious nonlinear response characteristics after liquefaction. The peak acceleration in the liquefiable soil layer was not significantly enlarged, while there was an increasing trend of response acceleration from bottom to top. The results of this paper can be used for comparative analysis and verification of numerical simulation in the future

Key words: liquefaction, free filed, shaking table test, seismic response, pore pressure ratio