Evaluation of Mexico City Clay Dynamic Properties Using a Parameter Identification Approach

Laboratory-determined soil dynamic properties are always (to different degrees) affected by sample disturbance, scale effects, deficient modeling of in situ conditions, and so on. The installation of vertical arrays of strong motion instruments and the ensuing records obtained during various seismic events, have opened the opportunity to explore other alternatives to evaluate soil dynamic properties by solving the inverse problem. In this paper, an analytical procedure that allows the solution of this problem in a simple way is presented and applied to a case history in Mexico City. The model assumes 1-D propagation of shear waves throughout homogeneous viscoelastic soil deposits. The results obtained here are compared with the velocities measured by means of field studies at Central de Abasto Oficinas (CAO) site with a P-S logging system. These comparisons show the potential of this procedure