Dr Gaetano Elia gained his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from the Technical University of Bari (Italy) in 2004. He was appointed a lectureship in Geotechnical Engineering in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University in 2009. From 2017 he is Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University and, from 2019, he is Associate Professor at the Technical University of Bari. His expertise is in theoretical and applied soil mechanics, with specific insight in advanced soil constitutive modelling and numerical simulation of wave propagation and soil dynamics problems. His current research is mainly focused on the numerical assessment of the resilience of geotechnical structures during extreme events, including the analysis of natural and engineered slopes subjected to extreme rainfalls and the performance-based design of shallow foundations, excavations and tunnels in static and dynamic conditions. Dr Elia acts as reviewer for a number of international journals and for EPSRC-UK. He is member of the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), the Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics (SECED), the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) and the Italian Geotechnical Association (AGI).
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2021
Soft rocks are of great geological and geotechnical interest, due to their mechanical and structu... more Soft rocks are of great geological and geotechnical interest, due to their mechanical and structural characteristics falling between those of a soil and those of a rock. This presents several challenges for constitutive and numerical modelling. Here we propose a calibration strategy of an advanced kinematic hardening model with structure degradation against experimental data on soft rocks, accounting for their features at the micro- and macro-scales. The experimental results show a highly structured material, with strength and stiffness being controlled by inter-granular bonding as well as by mean effective stress. The clay content of soft rock samples seems to be a dominant factor: the specimens show lower stiffness and strength when the content is higher. Accordingly, the samples have been classified into two different types (A and B). The constitutive model reproduces well both the mechanically strong and stiff behaviour of Type A as well as the more ductile mechanical response o...
A key issue for the estimation of ground shaking is the proper selection of input motions at the ... more A key issue for the estimation of ground shaking is the proper selection of input motions at the seismic bedrock. At the same time, the effect of the input motion scaling strategy on structural response is typically studied disregarding the presence of the soil deposit. In this work, different soft soil deposits are selected by varying the shear wave velocity profiles and the depth to the seismic bedrock, modelling the soil behaviour through a nonlinear constitutive model implemented into a fully coupled FE code. Seven input motions are retrieved for several selection strategies in conjunction with two seismic intensity levels. Hence, more than 300 one-dimensional ground response analyses are performed. The results of the analysed cases, which are presented in terms of spectral response at ground surface and amplification factors, indicate that: (i) the use of an advanced elasto-plastic soil constitutive model accounts for nonlinear ground response effects, including higher site amp...
The damping characteristics of soils are not accurately predicted in most constitutive models. Th... more The damping characteristics of soils are not accurately predicted in most constitutive models. This paper examines the cyclic performance of kinematic hardening models from the a posteriori analysi...
Nonlinear time domain numerical approaches together with elasto-plastic effective stress soil con... more Nonlinear time domain numerical approaches together with elasto-plastic effective stress soil constitutive models are nowadays available to geotechnical researchers and practitioners interested in geotechnical earthquake engineering. The use of such advanced two- and three-dimensional schemes allows the analysis and design of complex geotechnical structures within a performance-based framework, considering the build-up of excess pore water pressure during the earthquake, dynamic interaction between the soil deposit and the above surface buildings and infrastructures and effects of multi-directional seismic loading. Within this context, the paper focuses on the dynamic finite element (FE) method and presents a review of the key ingredients governing its predictive capabilities. These include i) the description of the fully coupled solid–fluid interaction formulation and time integration, ii) the calibration of Rayleigh damping and the soil constitutive model parameters, iii) prescrip...
The construction industry in Abu Dhabi is thriving and its coastline has some of the most ambitio... more The construction industry in Abu Dhabi is thriving and its coastline has some of the most ambitious structures in the world. Whilst the subsurface evaporitic and calcareous soft rocks of this region are of great geological interest, they are relatively poorly understood from a geotechnical engineering perspective, forcing foundation designs to be overly conservative. Understanding the stiffness of the underlying geology at small strains is of great importance for the accurate estimation of ground movements around excavations and foundations, and yet routine post-SI laboratory testing programmes tend to focus on basic rock mechanics tests such as UCS tests. These procedures are generally unsuitable for use with calcareous rocks due to their friable and moisture sensitive nature, and rarely obtain parameters representative of actual in situ behaviour. The calcareous mudstone investigated in this paper has mechanical and structural characteristics falling between those of a soil and th...
Incontro Annuale dei Ricercatori di Geotecnica, 2008
Nella nota vengono posti a confronto i risultati di analisi di risposta sismica locale ottenuti a... more Nella nota vengono posti a confronto i risultati di analisi di risposta sismica locale ottenuti attraverso simulazioni visco-elastiche lineari equivalenti 1D effettuate nel dominio delle frequenze con analisi visco-elastiche lineari 2D agli elementi finiti. Gli aspetti investigati riguardano la procedura di calibrazione dei parametri di rigidezza e di smorzamento viscoso ed il ruolo della discretizzazione del dominio di calcolo
Citation for published item: Elia G, Rouainia M. Numerical analysis of the seismic response of an... more Citation for published item: Elia G, Rouainia M. Numerical analysis of the seismic response of an earth embankment. In: 18th UK Conference on Computational Mechanics (ACME-UK).2010,Southampton, UK Further information on publisher website:
The behaviour of natural and artificial slopes is controlled by their thermo-hydro-mechanical con... more The behaviour of natural and artificial slopes is controlled by their thermo-hydro-mechanical conditions and by soil–vegetation–atmosphere interaction. Porewater pressure changes within a slope related to variable meteorological settings have been shown to be able to induce soil erosion, shrinkage–swelling and cracking, thus leading to an overall decrease of the available soil strength with depth and, ultimately, to a progressive slope collapse. In terms of numerical modelling, the stability analysis of partially saturated slopes is a complex problem and a wide range of approaches from simple limit equilibrium solutions to advanced numerical analyses have been proposed in the literature. The more advanced approaches, although more rigorous, require input data such as the soil water retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity function, which are difficult to obtain in some cases. The quantification of the effects of future climate scenarios represents an additional challenge in fo...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2021
Soft rocks are of great geological and geotechnical interest, due to their mechanical and structu... more Soft rocks are of great geological and geotechnical interest, due to their mechanical and structural characteristics falling between those of a soil and those of a rock. This presents several challenges for constitutive and numerical modelling. Here we propose a calibration strategy of an advanced kinematic hardening model with structure degradation against experimental data on soft rocks, accounting for their features at the micro- and macro-scales. The experimental results show a highly structured material, with strength and stiffness being controlled by inter-granular bonding as well as by mean effective stress. The clay content of soft rock samples seems to be a dominant factor: the specimens show lower stiffness and strength when the content is higher. Accordingly, the samples have been classified into two different types (A and B). The constitutive model reproduces well both the mechanically strong and stiff behaviour of Type A as well as the more ductile mechanical response o...
A key issue for the estimation of ground shaking is the proper selection of input motions at the ... more A key issue for the estimation of ground shaking is the proper selection of input motions at the seismic bedrock. At the same time, the effect of the input motion scaling strategy on structural response is typically studied disregarding the presence of the soil deposit. In this work, different soft soil deposits are selected by varying the shear wave velocity profiles and the depth to the seismic bedrock, modelling the soil behaviour through a nonlinear constitutive model implemented into a fully coupled FE code. Seven input motions are retrieved for several selection strategies in conjunction with two seismic intensity levels. Hence, more than 300 one-dimensional ground response analyses are performed. The results of the analysed cases, which are presented in terms of spectral response at ground surface and amplification factors, indicate that: (i) the use of an advanced elasto-plastic soil constitutive model accounts for nonlinear ground response effects, including higher site amp...
The damping characteristics of soils are not accurately predicted in most constitutive models. Th... more The damping characteristics of soils are not accurately predicted in most constitutive models. This paper examines the cyclic performance of kinematic hardening models from the a posteriori analysi...
Nonlinear time domain numerical approaches together with elasto-plastic effective stress soil con... more Nonlinear time domain numerical approaches together with elasto-plastic effective stress soil constitutive models are nowadays available to geotechnical researchers and practitioners interested in geotechnical earthquake engineering. The use of such advanced two- and three-dimensional schemes allows the analysis and design of complex geotechnical structures within a performance-based framework, considering the build-up of excess pore water pressure during the earthquake, dynamic interaction between the soil deposit and the above surface buildings and infrastructures and effects of multi-directional seismic loading. Within this context, the paper focuses on the dynamic finite element (FE) method and presents a review of the key ingredients governing its predictive capabilities. These include i) the description of the fully coupled solid–fluid interaction formulation and time integration, ii) the calibration of Rayleigh damping and the soil constitutive model parameters, iii) prescrip...
The construction industry in Abu Dhabi is thriving and its coastline has some of the most ambitio... more The construction industry in Abu Dhabi is thriving and its coastline has some of the most ambitious structures in the world. Whilst the subsurface evaporitic and calcareous soft rocks of this region are of great geological interest, they are relatively poorly understood from a geotechnical engineering perspective, forcing foundation designs to be overly conservative. Understanding the stiffness of the underlying geology at small strains is of great importance for the accurate estimation of ground movements around excavations and foundations, and yet routine post-SI laboratory testing programmes tend to focus on basic rock mechanics tests such as UCS tests. These procedures are generally unsuitable for use with calcareous rocks due to their friable and moisture sensitive nature, and rarely obtain parameters representative of actual in situ behaviour. The calcareous mudstone investigated in this paper has mechanical and structural characteristics falling between those of a soil and th...
Incontro Annuale dei Ricercatori di Geotecnica, 2008
Nella nota vengono posti a confronto i risultati di analisi di risposta sismica locale ottenuti a... more Nella nota vengono posti a confronto i risultati di analisi di risposta sismica locale ottenuti attraverso simulazioni visco-elastiche lineari equivalenti 1D effettuate nel dominio delle frequenze con analisi visco-elastiche lineari 2D agli elementi finiti. Gli aspetti investigati riguardano la procedura di calibrazione dei parametri di rigidezza e di smorzamento viscoso ed il ruolo della discretizzazione del dominio di calcolo
Citation for published item: Elia G, Rouainia M. Numerical analysis of the seismic response of an... more Citation for published item: Elia G, Rouainia M. Numerical analysis of the seismic response of an earth embankment. In: 18th UK Conference on Computational Mechanics (ACME-UK).2010,Southampton, UK Further information on publisher website:
The behaviour of natural and artificial slopes is controlled by their thermo-hydro-mechanical con... more The behaviour of natural and artificial slopes is controlled by their thermo-hydro-mechanical conditions and by soil–vegetation–atmosphere interaction. Porewater pressure changes within a slope related to variable meteorological settings have been shown to be able to induce soil erosion, shrinkage–swelling and cracking, thus leading to an overall decrease of the available soil strength with depth and, ultimately, to a progressive slope collapse. In terms of numerical modelling, the stability analysis of partially saturated slopes is a complex problem and a wide range of approaches from simple limit equilibrium solutions to advanced numerical analyses have been proposed in the literature. The more advanced approaches, although more rigorous, require input data such as the soil water retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity function, which are difficult to obtain in some cases. The quantification of the effects of future climate scenarios represents an additional challenge in fo...
Uploads