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Soil liquefaction describes a phenomenon whereby a saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress, usually earthquake shaking or other sudden change in stress condition, causing it to behave like a liquid.

Is there any adjective to use with a soil variant suffering from liquefaction? I tried liquefactioned but it appears that liquefaction cannot be used as a verb.

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    The verb is liquefied. Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 6:23
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    "In soil mechanics the term "liquefied" was first used by Hazen[1] in reference to the 1918 failure of the Calaveras Dam in California." "... the initial movement of some part of the material might result in accumulating pressure, first on one point, and then on another, successively, as the early points of concentration were liquefied." "... so once the soil liquefies due to shaking, ..." "Buildings whose foundations bear directly on sand which liquefies will experience a sudden loss of support, ..." (emphasis mine) Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction
    – Kris
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 6:35
  • Oh sorry, I did not read the full Wikipedia article. Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 6:40
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    See also: "lateral spreading - the ground can slide down very gentle slopes or toward stream banks riding on a buried liquefied layer." "sand boils - sand-laden water can be ejected from a buried liquefied layer and erupt at the surface ..." (emphasis mine) USGS geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/sfgeo/liquefaction/aboutliq.html
    – Kris
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 6:40
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    The most striking word choice I've read—and I read it back in 1989, after the Loma Prieta earthquake knocked down part of an elevated freeway in the San Francisco Bay Area that had been built on soil that liquefied during the shaking, so it was pretty memorable—was a spokesperson at the U.S. Geological survey, who described the soil's consistency during the quake as "pudding-like." (That's "pudding-like" in the U.S. "custard" sense of the word, not in the British "Yorkshire pudding" or "black pudding" sense.)
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 7:31

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You were close with liquefactioned.

A search for liquefacted turns up a respectable number of search results that appear related to the phenomenon as described in the Wikipedia entry you quoted.

You can see it used in context in the introduction of this engineering paper, on page 26 of this Emergency Operations Plan for a California school district, on page 4 of this university newsletter, and in this blog post. I may have gotten carried away with citing examples.

I also found a smaller number of results for the alternative spelling liquifacted.

At any rate, my answer to your question is liquefacted.

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