Zagreb Container Pier Terminal Project in Rijeka – Croatia: earthquake engineering and geotechnical aspects

This paper aims to describe the earthquake and geotechnical aspects of design of the Zagreb Pier Container Terminal Project in Rijeka. This new facility will increase the compet- itiveness of Rijeka as a port City, realizing a new quay with a total length of 680 m (to be achieved in two phases). The new structure is conceived as a semi-open quay, realized with precast caissons laying on a submerged embankment. The characteristics of the foundation soil are particularly severe, on site, due to the presence of a thick layer of soft cohesive soils, overlaying a rocky substratum. A soil improvement was therefore carried out by executing stone columns and jet- grouting. As part of design a Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Study (PSHA) was carried out, to overcome possible limitations of code spectra and 3D non-linear dynamic analyses in the time domain were developed to precisely asses seismic actions