Investigation of Dynamic Property of Soil Commonly Found in Arba Minch Town
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Date
2013
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The nature and distribution of earthquake damage is strongly influenced by the
response of soils to cyclic loading. The better understanding of the dynamic properties
of some particular natural soil such as the Mexico City clays or the San Francisco Bay
mud, together with the actual ground motion measurements during the Michoacan-
1985 and the Loma-Prieta earthquakes, have been greatly contribute to show off the
importance of local site conditions and dynamic properties of natural soils. Of those
dynamic properties, the shear modulus and damping characteristics of cyclically loaded
soils are critical to the evaluation of Geotechnical Engineering problems. Generally, soil
is a nonlinear material which causes nonlinear seismic loading responses of grounds
especially for earthquake ground motions corresponding to strain level (_ ≥ 0.01%).
In this thesis, the shear modulus and damping ratio values of soils commonly found in
Arba Minch were determined using cyclic simple shear testing machine on remolded
samples. The tests were conducted as a function of cyclic strain amplitude of 0.01 %, 0.1
%, 1 %, 2.5 %, and 5% under the axial pressures of 100kPa, 200kPa and 400kPa. The test
results revealed that the shear modulus reduction values are in good agreement with
curves of local soils but slightly lower than other established literature value at the
highest strain level (_ >0.1 %). The damping ratio value of the tests are generally in a
good agreement with curves of local soils but slightly lower than the other literature
values. This indicates that, the testing conditions appear to have significant effect on the
damping ratio values but little effect on the shear modulus reduction values.
The cyclic simple shear test machine, currently functional in the laboratory, is capable of
reproducing earthquake stress condition accurately. Moreover, the index properties of
the soil are determined for characterization of the soil in the town to setup schedules of
dynamic property investigations in this research
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CIVIL ENGINEERING