A Comparative Study on Shear Modulus and Damping Ratio for a Cohesive Soil from Laboratory Tests

Different laboratory tests were carried out on undisturbed specimens of lightly overconsolidated clay. The laboratory tests comprise dynamic resonant column tests and static cyclic torsional shear and simple shear tests. Test results are compared in terms of stiffness and damping properties over a wide strain range, from 0.0003% to almost 1%. It has been shown a very satisfactory agreement between the results of static cyclic tests in terms of maximum shear modulus, normalized shear modulus and damping ratio in the whole strain range investigated. Greater scatter was found between the results of static cyclic tests and those obtained by dynamic resonant column tests, especially for small strain shear modulus and damping ratio.