Geotechnical and mineralogical characterization of fine grained soils affected by soil slips

Soil slips affect essentially the degraded or weathered covers of soil, and could be particularly dangerous because of their kinematic mechanism and their spreading over wide areas during rainstorms. The high incidence of soil slips in an area of Central Calabria (Southern Italy) prompted a research aimed at geotechnical characterisation of fine-grained soils involved in this kind of instability. This paper illustrates the geotechnical and the mineralogical characterization carried out on samples coming from three sites representative of the wider study area, where sedimentary terrain (Plio-Pleistocene) crops out. Classification and direct shear tests have been conducted on undisturbed specimens and artificially degraded specimens. The results supply a reference frame of the soils physical-mechanical characteristics. Correlating the geotechnical analysis with the mineralogical-geochemical investigations allows a wider characterization of the sediment properties.