The city of Augusta (SR) is located on the eastern coast of Sicily, which is one of the most seismically active areas of Italy. The eastern coast of Sicily has been struck by various disastrous earthquakes with a MKS intensity from IX to XI in the last 900 years. In this area a historical military Hangar was subjected to a differential foundation settlements. For the restoration and reinforcement of the Hangar extended in situ and laboratory tests were performed. In this paper the geotechnical characteristics of this area was investigated from laboratory tests. The following investigations were carried out on undisturbed samples: Oedometer tests, Direct Shear tests, Triaxial tests, Resonant Column and Torsional Shear tests. The influence of strain rate and number of loading cycles on the G-γ and D- γ curves, as well as on the shear strength and pore pressure build up, was evaluated by means of cyclic laboratory tests. Finally two expression to allows the complete shear modulus degradation with strain level and the inverse variation of damping ratio with normalised shear modulus respectively were proposed. This enables the evaluations of site effects and earthquake design loads for the restoration and strengthening of the military Hangar.
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