A simulated earthquake in a centrifuge machine will be demonstrated for media 1 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 17, at UC Davis to show how saturated soils can liquefy and catastrophically displace a scale model of a typical waterfront retaining wall found in major port cities. The demonstration illustrates a new way of evaluating the damage that a devastating earthquake and resulting soil liquefaction might do to large infrastructures, such as transportation systems, dams, power plants and waterfront structures. For the past four years, this technique has been used by 30 research teams from the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan to establishing safe and economical methods to analyze the safety of infrastructure systems. Their findings will be presented Oct. 17-20 at UC Davis. The project is expected to help engineers design structures better able to survive soil liquefaction during earthquakes. Conference results will be available Oct. 20.