Experimental, Theoretical and Numerical Evaluation of the Stiffness of a Soil-Foundation Model by Shaking-Table Test

A well-controlled test was carried out on a Leighton Buzzard sand-shallow foundation system by means of the six-degree-of-freedom shaking table available at the University of Bristol. The foundation consists of a concrete block located into a flexible shear-stack (Taylor et al., 1994) filled up to 1.00 m with the sand. During the test the block was subjected to a centered vertical load and to one direction sine dwell-type acceleration applied at the base of the shear stack. The static and dynamic sand properties were evaluated through different laboratory tests, among them resonant column tests, cyclic and monotonic loading torsional shear tests were performed (Mazzarella, 1999). A comprehensive network of accelerometers and displacement transducers was used to check the static and dynamic soil-foundation interaction (Maugeri et al., 1999a). The impedance functions (Gazetas, 1991) were evaluated and then compared with the experimental results. Finally, the experimental results were compared with the numerical ones obtained by means of a FEM code (Massimino, 1999) developed at the University of Catania