Civil and geotechnical engineers may be shaken this month to heara new evaluation of the methods used to assess the damage that a devastating earthquake and resulting soil "liquefaction" might do to transportation systems, dams, buildings and waterfront structures. For the past four years, modern engineering methods have been undergoing the scrutiny of 30 research teams from the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Their findings, based on simulated earthquakes created by machines called centrifuges, 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. "The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of current methods of liquefaction analysis and to provide safe and economical methods to analyze the safety of infrastructure systems," says UC Davis engineering professor Kandiah Arulanandan, the prinicipal investigator. He will host a demonstration of the centrifuge technique for the media at 1 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 17, at UC Davis. Conference results will be available Oct. 20.