Dynamic Characterization of Soils at Sellano for Seismic Microzonation

This paper describes the results of a in situ study which was carried out in order to determine the geotechnical dynamic soil behaviour of Sellano area for seismic microzonation, with special attention being paid to the variation of initial shear modulus Go with depth. The experimental study was carried out using Down-Hole Tests and Standard Penetration Tests (SPT) results. General geotechnical characteristics were evaluated on undisturbed samples in static field. The results obtained showed the possibility to use empirical correlations from SPT to evaluate Go. The use of a new equation to estimate the initial shear modulus was also proposed. Finally a comparison between normalised law for different cohesive soils to consider shear modulus decay and damping ratio increase with strain level was proposed.