Site Characterisation and Site Response for a Cohesive Soil in the City of Catania

This paper describes and compares the results of in situ and laboratory investigations that were carried out in order to determine the soil dynamic characteristics in the test site of "Via Dottor Consoli" in the city of Catania. Special attention has been paid to the variation of shear modulus and damping ratio with strain level and depth. Moreover normalised laws are proposed to consider shear modulus decay and damping ratio increase with strain level. The deposits under consideration consist of slight overconsolidated cohesive soil. The geotechnical characterization enabled the assessment of site effects and earthquake response spectrum for the restoration and strengthening of a masonry building located on the investigated test site. The excitation at the base of the model were synthetic accelerograms, related to the 1693 scenario earthquake (M = 7.0 - 7.3), considering an extended source model, and the scaled recorded accelerograms of the South Eastern Sicily earthquake of December 13, 1990 (ML = 5.8). The response of the soil was evaluated with a 1-D non-linear code, considering the upper 30 m of soil profile to compare the result with those suggested by the Eurocode and the Italian new proposed regulation.