Geotechnical characterisation of fine-grained soils affected by soil slips

The high incidence of soil slips in an area of Calabria (Southern Italy) that is representative of a typical geo-environmental context, suggested a research aimed to the geotechnical characterisation of finegrained soils involved in this kind of instability. The paper shows the geotechnical investigation carried out on samples coming from two test sites individuated in the study area named Stretta di Catanzaro . The results give a first reference scheme about the physical-mechanical characteristics of the soils affected by shallow and fast sliding-flow soil slip instabilities. In particular, they permit: to characterise soils with stress levels coherent with the thickness of the materials involved in shallow instabilities; to define the influence of soil saturation on its shear strength; to investigate about the influence of degradation processes on shear strength.