Ricerc@Sapienza

Seismic performance of slopes can be assessed through displacement-based procedures
where earthquake-induced displacements are usually computed following Newmark-type
calculations. These can be adopted to perform a parametric integration of earthquake
records to evaluate permanent displacements for different slope characteristics and seismic
input properties. Several semi-empirical relationships can be obtained for different
purposes: obtaining site-specific displacement hazard curves following a fully-probabilistic
approach, to assess the seismic risk associated with the slope; providing semi-empirical
models within a deterministic framework, where the seismic-induced permanent displacement
is compared with threshold values related to different levels of seismic performance;
calibrating the seismic coefficient to be used in pseudo-static calculations, where a safety
factor against limit conditions is computed. In this research project, semi-empirical relationships will be
obtained as a result of a parametric integration of an updated version of the Italian strong motion
database, that, in turn, is described and compared to older versions of the database
and to well-known ground motion prediction equations. Permanent displacement will be
expressed as a function of either ground motion parameters, for a given yield seismic coefficient
of the slope, or of both ground motion parameters and the seismic coefficient. The
first are meant to be used as a tool to develop site-specific displacement hazard curves,
while the last can be used to evaluate earthquake-induced slope displacements, as well as to
calibrate the seismic coefficient to be used in a pseudo-static analysis. Influence of the vertical
component of seismic motion on these semi-empirical relationships will also be assessed.