Abstract
The location of Pakistan is in a collision zone among the Eurasian and Indian plate boundaries. The geological framework of the Northwest Himalaya makes Northern Pakistan susceptible to frequent moderate to major earthquakes. The devastating earthquake of October 8, 2005 caused 87,000 deaths, 2.8 million displacements and financial loss of 200 Billion USD equivalent to 6% GDP of Pakistan. Islamabad is in seismically active region, the studies conducted for this region addresses the poor soil conditions, non-engineering construction practices and high level of seismic shaking. However, none of these studies provided readily available ground maps (top 30m time average shear wave velocity V s30 , average soil shear wave velocity V sz & depth to bed rock D bed rock ) based on site specific geotechnical database. V s30 , V sz & D bed rock are important parameters for the evaluation of dynamic site characteristics of shallow bed rock sites. In Pakistan, Uniform Building Code (UBC-1997) is currently practiced, and the site classification are defined using site specific V s30 . In this study, geotechnical borehole database of 57 sites of Islamabad was collected to develop GIS based V s30 , V sz & D bed rock maps using Standard Penetration Test value (SPT-N). The borehole database includes, SPT-N, soil description and unit weight of soil for the Islamabad sites. In order to develop shear wave velocity (V s ) profiles, the available V s -SPT empirical correlations were evaluated where both SPT-N & V s measured data is available. The selected available correlations were applied to SPT-N database to develop representative Vs profiles. Using these V s profiles, V s30 , V sz & D bed rock GIS based maps were developed by applying Kriging interpolation in open source QGIS software. The proposed GIS maps can be used in preliminary earthquake design for seismic resilient earthquake design in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Highlights
Vs30 n di i 1 Vsi where di= thickness of each soil layer, VSi = shear wave velocity of each soil layer and n is number of layers.In event of earthquake, the surface dynamic site characteristics are predominantly controlled by local geology
In case of site, where soil profile comprises of number of layers, VS30 can be calculated as, The shear wave velocity profile is developed using various geophysical tests [3, 4]
All the calculated Vs30, Vsz & Dbed rock were interpolated for the location where no sample data was available by applying the kriging method in QGIS [23]
Summary
The local site effects at surface are evaluated by implying the site specific small strain property known as shear wave velocity (Vs) [1, 2]. In current geotechnical engineering practice, the top 30m time average shear wave velocity (Vs30) is used to define local site effects. Based on calculated Vs30 site can be classified into five (05) classes ranging from A to F, Table 1. This top 30m is considered relatively shallow in engineering seismology, it is typical boring depth around the world for geotechnical investigations. In case of site, where soil profile comprises of number of layers, VS30 can be calculated as, The shear wave velocity profile is developed using various geophysical tests [3, 4].
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