Abstract: To study the impact of velocity pulse effects on liquefiable sites, a finite element model was established based on the OpenSees platform to investigate the response differences of a local liquefiable site under the near-fault ground motions with and without velocity pulses, including the vertical displacement, acceleration time history, shear stress-strain of soil, excess pore water pressure ratio, and cyclic stress ratio. The numerical calculations show that, under the same amplitude of input ground motions, the average vertical permanent displacement and the duration of liquefiable soil under non-pulse ground motions are 13% and 19% higher than those under pulse ground motion, respectively. The maximum shear strain of liquefiable soil subjected to ground motions with velocity pulses is about 5.4 times higher than that of non-velocity pulse ground motion, and the maximum shear stress is about 1.7 times larger. Under the ground motions with velocity pulses, the liquefiable soil exhibits larger hysteretic shear stress-strain loops, but small numbers of hysteresis loops, as well as larger cyclic stress ratio for soil layers with different burial depths, which facilitates soil liquefaction. Moreover, non-liquefiable dense sand layer amplifies the seismic accelerations and liquefiable loose sand layer filtered the high-frequency contents of the seismic ground motions leading to smoother acceleration time histories on the ground surface. Under the ground motions with velocity pulses, the excess pore water pressures are generally smaller, indicating more significant dilatancy effects in the liquefiable soil than those under non-pulse ground motions.