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Procedia Engineering 158 (2016) 356 – 361

VI ITALIAN CONFERENCE OF RESEARCHERS IN GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING –

Geotechnical Engineering in Multidisciplinary Research: from Microscale to Regional Scale,
CNRIG2016

1D seismic analysis of earth dams: the example of the Lentini site

Francesco Castellia, Valentina Lentinia,*, Carla Assunta Trifaròa
a
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University of Enna Kore, Via delle Olimpiadi, 94100 Enna, Italy

Abstract

The assessment of the likely performance of an earth dam during earthquakes is important because its failure can result in
significant human and financial losses and severe environmental impact. In the last years the seismic safety assessment of
existing dams has evolved itself especially in light of promulgated specific recent laws (D.M. 26 June 2014). On 13th December
1990 the Santa Lucia earthquake caused very strong shaking in many municipalities of oriental Sicily, inducing 17 dead,
hundreds injured and thousands homeless. The Lentini earth dam, located in the Val di Noto (South-Eastern Sicily), experienced
the earthquake and showed damage and deformation. Damage to embankment dams included cracks in the impervious membrane
of asphalt. The aim of this study is to analyze the dynamic response of the earth dam for the input motion of the 1990 St. Lucia
earthquake and comparing the results of free field 1D PLAXIS simulation to those obtained by the EERA and the MARTA
codes, in which the soil is modeled as a linear equivalent material.
©©2016
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Authors. Published
Published by by Elsevier
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This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing and scientific committees of CNRIG2016.
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Peer-review under the responsibility of the organizing and scientific committees of CNRIG2016
Keywords: Earth dam; seismic damage assessment; local seismic response

1. Introduction

The heritage of Italian dams includes more than 500 structures of various typologies materials and age. These
dams are classified as large dam if the height is greater than 15 m or the basin is larger than 1.000.000 m3. More than
300 dams are currently in operation and many of them are located in areas of medium to high seismicity.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-0935-536351; fax: +39-0935-536623.

E-mail address: valentina.lentini@unikore.it

1877-7058 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under the responsibility of the organizing and scientific committees of CNRIG2016
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.08.455
 Francesco Castelli et al. / Procedia Engineering 158 (2016) 356 – 361 357

The 13 December 1990 St. Lucia earthquake (ML=5.7) induced very strong shaking in many municipalities of
oriental Sicily, causing 17 dead, hundreds injured and thousands homeless. The Lentini earth dam, located in the Val
di Noto (South-Eastern Sicily), experienced the earthquake and showed damage and deformation. Cracks near the
main abutment of the dam were observed. An inspection pit was excavated to a depth of approximately 0.5 m for
examination. Based on the examination, the damage seemed to be manageable.
The static and seismic behavior of geotechnical structures [1-4] is a very important issue. In particular, the
earthquake performance of an earth dam has been focused. Recently, various approaches to the dynamic response
analysis of earth dams have been applied. The equivalent linear method for the two-dimensional finite element
dynamic analyses of an earth dam has been used [5], taking into account for synthetic and real acceleration histories
as the input motions. The dynamic response for the same dam using the finite element method with a hardening soil
model has been studied by [6], back-analyzing the earth dam construction. A tailing dam has been evaluated by [7]
using the FEM code PLAXIS [8] to study static and seismic loading. Also, the finite difference code FLAC has been
used by [9,10] to evaluate the seismic response of a 2-D and 3-D earth dam respectively.
This study focuses on the dynamic response of the Lentini earth dam for the input motion of the 1990 St. Lucia
strong earthquake. The dynamic response of the model is obtained by comparing the results of free field 1D PLAXIS
simulation to those obtained using the EERA [11] code and the MARTA [12] code, in which the soil is modeled as a
linear equivalent material.

2. Description of the Lentini earth dam

The basin of Lentini has been realized with a dam on the site of an ancient natural lake. It is fed by the Simeto
and the St. Leonard rivers. The water is used for irrigation and for industrial and civilians use in the areas of Catania
and Syracuse. The basin covers an area of 10 km2 and has the capacity of 127 million m3 of water.
The basin is contained by an earth dam made up of two parts: the biggest has a U-shape on the North, East and
South side, with a maximum height of about 33 m and 7.25 km long whereas the second part, on the South side, has
a maximum height of 20 m and 1.55 km long. A cross section of the dam, which illustrates its material composition,
is shown in Figure 1. The crest is 6.70 m in width and is placed at 36,70 m above the sea level (Fig. 1).
The dam body is formed with limestone and basalt rockfill, it is controlled by an extensive system of filters and
drains and is coated with a layer of bituminous concrete. The exhaust works and junction are located in
correspondence of a relief of alluvial terraces that separates the two branches of the dam.

Fig. 1. Cross section of the Lentini earth dam.

The area is a natural depression of tectonic origin, filled by a marine formation of clays of 200 m in thickness,
covered with brown silt and alluvial soil. The project required extensive remediation of the foundation, already
covered by the old lake deposits. A complex drainage system with pumping has been realized, involving a
systematic demanding maintenance.
The area is characterized by a high seismicity, with predominant seismogenic source in the Malta Escarpment, an
undersea fault line that runs parallel to the coast at 10-20 km away. The data related to Sicilian capable faults (Fig.
2a), including geometry, kinematics, associated earthquakes and medium deformation, are collected in a catalog
358 Francesco Castelli et al. / Procedia Engineering 158 (2016) 356 – 361

(ITHACA - ITaly HAzard from CApable faults) consisting of a constantly updated database and detailed maps
managed in a GIS environment. Figure 2b shows a faults system able to cause considerable damage to the basin of
Lentini. The one closest to the area is a capable fault including in the Graben system Scordia-Lentini.
The historical strongest earthquakes are placed in the area between Augusta and Catania. Two of the most
destructive events happened on February 4, 1169 and January 11, 1693. More recently, on December 13, 1990 an
earthquake with a magnitude M=5.7 and epicenter at a depth of 12.7 km, located in the Ionian Sea to the north of
Augusta, about 25 km away from the dam of Lentini caused damage to the banks. When the St. Lucia earthquake
occurred, the basin was almost empty. Damages of the bituminous surface have occurred on the south side, in
correspondence of the major height of the section of the dam (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2. (a) Map of the Sicilian capable faults (ITHACA); (b) faults in the area of Lentini lake.

Fig. 3. Cracks of the bituminous surface of the Lentini dam.

The continuous and oblique cracks affected the dam from the base to the crest, without relative displacements of
the two flaps. The cracks were distant several tens of meters and had an aperture of about 1 mm. Therefore, it was
necessary an extraordinary intervention to restore the damages of the bituminous surface. The repair was made with
milling of a strip on the lesion and subsequent reconstruction of the surface layer, as well as with local and diffuse
sealing, especially in the proximity of the crest and the base of the mantle.

3. Geotechnical characterization

The geotechnical characterization of the foundation soil has been performed through surveys carried out from
November 1983 to July 1984. During the construction work of the basin, no.75 boreholes were carried out, of which
37 along the main bank, 13 and 5 along the north and south banks respectively, 13 and 7 in the foundation soil of the
 Francesco Castelli et al. / Procedia Engineering 158 (2016) 356 – 361 359

sewage works and of the tailrace. The boreholes had a depth between 15 and 60 m. Also were performed 71 cone
penetration test (CPT), of which 39 along the main bank, 13 and 4 along the north and south banks respectively, 7
and 8 in the foundation soil of the sewage works and of the tailrace.
The geotechnical parameters, that is physical, strength and stiffness properties of the soil were obtained from the
geotechnical investigations carried out on the foundation soil of the banks and sewage works of the dam.
Specifically, laboratory tests such as oedometer test, unconfined compression test, triaxial test were performed on
undisturbed samples.
Tables 1 reports some of the physical parameters in terms of water content wn, soil unit weight J, plasticity index
PI, coefficient of consolidation Cv and the shear parameters in terms of friction angle M’, cohesion c’ and undrained
cohesion cu, obtained from standard consolidated undrained and unconsolidated undrained triaxial compression tests
performed on undisturbed samples retrieved by geotechnical survey (Fig. 4) of the main bank of the dam. These
parameters have been adopted for the analyses.

Fig. 4. Map of the geotechnical survey in the area of main weir.

Table 1. Physical and mechanical parameters of the soil.

Borehole Depth (m) wn (%) J (kN/m3) PI (%) Cv (cm2/s)  Vf (kN/m3) cu (kN/m2) M’ (°) c’ (kN/m2)

L18 4.6 - 5.0 35.4 27.3 52.4 5.7E-05 9.8 - 16 2.9

L19 10.6 - 11.0 36.3 27.3 58.9 3.3E-03 21.9 12.3 - -

L19 18.5 - 19.0 34.5 27.0 50.0 3.9E-04 50.2 19.6 - -

L23 5.0 - 5.6 30.8 27.0 41.6 4.3E-04 29.3 14.7 - -

A 3.8 31.2 26.7 67.0 6.9E-04 28.4 24.5 - -

B 2.8 26.0 26.7 51.5 1.1E-03 76.2 39.2 - -

C 2.5 27.0 26.7 55.4 2.9E-04 22.3 15.7 - -

D 3.5 27.9 26.7 59.1 1.1E-03 34.8 12.3 - -

4. Seismic response analysis

As already stated, the paper presents some results related to the dynamic behavior of the Lentini earth dam
obtained from the 1D seismic response analysis using the codes EERA and MARTA and the finite element software
PLAXIS. EERA, as well as MARTA, is a modern implementation of the well-known concepts of equivalent linear
earthquake site response analysis applied in SHAKE [13]. The soil profiles are subjected to the input ground motion
from the bedrock that is specified as an out-crop motion. PLAXIS is a geotechnical finite element software,
specifically developed for the 2D and 3D analysis of deformation [14], stability and groundwater flow. The real
360 Francesco Castelli et al. / Procedia Engineering 158 (2016) 356 – 361

seismic record related to the acceleration time history of the 1990 St. Lucia earthquake (Sortino station record) was
used as input motion. The results have been compared in terms of maximum horizontal acceleration profile.
In analyzing ground motions due to small vibrations, soil behavior is assumed to be linear. Each soil layer is
assigned a shear modulus and a material damping ratio. However, as well known, dynamic soil properties can be
extremely nonlinear when ground motions are caused by large vibrations (such as earthquakes). As a result, the
change in shear modulus and material damping ratio with shearing strain amplitude must be accounted for the
ground response analysis. The state of practice in equivalent linear analysis [15-17] often employs empirical
normalized modulus reduction and a material damping curves. The empirical normalized modulus reduction curve is
scaled using an estimate of the small-strain shear modulus. Material damping ratio at small strains is referred to as
small-strain material damping ratio Do. The small-strain shear modulus Go has been calculated according to the
empirical correlation [18] taking into account the CPTs results of the in situ geotechnical investigation and
subsequently the shear wave velocity Vs has been evaluated for each layer through the well-known relation Go = U.
Vs2, being U the mass density.
The normalized modulus reduction and the material damping curves adopted in the analyses comply with the
empirical equations proposed by [19] taking into account for the plasticity index, over-consolidation ratio and
confining pressure. The normalized shear modulus reduction G/Go and the material damping ratio D versus shear
strain J curves adopted for the numerical analysis are shown in Figure 5 for the three different soil layers: lake
deposit (Material 1), silty clay (Material 2), sandy silt (Material 3).
1 20
M aterial 1 M aterial 1
M aterial 2 M aterial 2
M aterial 3 M aterial 3
N ormalized Shear M odulus G/ Go

0.8 16
Damp ing ratio D (%)

0.6 12

0.4 8

0.2 4

0 0
0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1

Shear strain J (%) Shear strain J (%)

Fig. 5. G/Go-Ȗ and D-Ȗ curves of layers.

A 36 m height column was assumed as representative of the soil sequence, constituted of lake deposit, silty clay,
sandy silt and volcanic rock. In the analyses, the dam body and the foundation soil were modeled as non linear
elastic perfectly plastic materials with Mohr Coulomb’s plasticity criterion. The basaltic deposit found underneath
the silty clay and sandy silt soil was considered as a bedrock, characterized by a shear wave velocity Vs = 800 m/s,
with constant small strain shear modulus Go = 1440 MPa. The shear wave velocity profile is reported in Figure 6a.
The free-field seismic response analyses have been carried out assuming an elastic bedrock and applying to the
base of the column the time history of acceleration of the selected earthquake. Figure 6b shows the results of
PLAXIS 1D free-field analyses compared with those obtained using the codes MARTA and EERA. Similar values
of the maximum horizontal acceleration ax,max were computed with the methods in the bedrock and the foundation
soil, while higher values were obtained in the dam body with the finite difference analysis. The three methods are in
a fair agreement to each other.

5. Conclusion

The paper presents some results related to the 1D analysis of dynamic behavior of the Lentini earth dam obtained
using the codes EERA and MARTA and the finite element software PLAXIS. The soil 1D profile is subjected to the
input ground motion from the bedrock. The real seismic record related to the acceleration time history of the 1990
 Francesco Castelli et al. / Procedia Engineering 158 (2016) 356 – 361 361

St. Lucia earthquake (Sortino station record) was used as input motion. The results have been compared in terms of
maximum horizontal acceleration profile, showing a quite good agreement among the different codes.
Shear waves velocity (m/ s) amax ( g)
0 200 400 600 800 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
0 0
M ART A
EERA
5 5 PLAX I S

10 10

15 15
Dep th (m)

Dep th (m)
20 20

25 25

30 30

35 35

40 40

Fig. 6. (a) Shear waves velocity versus depth; (b) Results of free-field analysis.

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