Non Linear Behaviour of Sandy Soil for the City of Catania

In this paper a review of the principal results of a research conducted on the subsoil of the city of Catania, located in eastern Sicily (Italy), is presented. The results of in situ and laboratory investigations are described and compared in order to provide a representative model of ground conditions of different zones in the city for realistic seismic scenarios response analysis. The investigation programme was performed in seven different test sites of Catania to evaluate the variation of shear modulus and damping ratio with strain level and depth. Moreover, for sandy soil normalized laws are proposed to consider shear modulus decay and damping ratio increase with strain level.