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ESTIMATION OF SITE EFFECTS FOR VIJAYAWADA CITY

Conference Paper · January 2011

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 Proceedings of Indian Geotechnical Conference
December 15-17, 2011, Kochi (Paper No F-028.)

ESTIMATION OF SITE EFFECTS FOR VIJAYAWADA CITY

Akhila Manne, Research student, Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, IIIT Hyderabad, manneakhila.civil@gmail.com.
S. Silpa Chowdary, Post Graduate student, Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, IIIT Hyderabad.
D. Neelima Satyam, Assistant professor, Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, IIIT Hyderabad.

ABSTRACT: Site effects play a major role in the seismic ground motion and have been ascertained by many seismologists
and earthquake engineers. Traditionally, direct waves were used for the site effect study (Gutenberg, 1957; Borcherdt, 1970)
but later it has been realized that the source, path and site characterization are the important parameters that affect earthquake
ground motion. Local site effects can cause considerable modification of seismic amplitudes. Depending on the ground
characteristics, the ground shaking is influenced, which may result in the amplification (causing resonance) or attenuation.
Nonlinear amplification at sediments sites appears to be more pervasive than seismologists used to think (Aki et.al., 1991).
Spectral amplification factor is a parameter which can be used to find out theses effects. Site effect is also an important
parameter in microzonation study. The information about the local site effects is useful in the simulation of strong ground
motions and hence, the results of the site response studies are one of the most important inputs for seismic hazard assessment
of a region. In this research paper, Vijayawada city which falls in zone III (IS 1893: 2002) has been considered for the site
response study. It is the 34th largest town in India (population wise), and the 3rd largest town in Andhra Pradesh. The shear
wave velocities and bulk density are used to estimate the average spectral amplification factor. Amplified site response at the
soft soil sites are obtained using the input shear wave velocities.

KEYWORDS: Spectral Amplification Factor, Ground Response, Degtra.

INTRODUCTION: considered. It is one of the 38 cities in India with more than

Seismic waves propagate from bed rock to the ground surface
and the characteristics of waves differ from one site to the
adjacent site due to different sub layer properties.
Traditionally, direct waves were used for the site effect study
(Gutenberg, Borcherdt) [1, 2] but later it has been realized
that the source, path and site characterization are the
important parameters that affect earthquake ground motion.
The damage caused by Bhuj earthquake (7.7M w), which has
been one of the most destructive earthquakes of 2001 is
because of site effects and liquefaction. So, to mitigate
seismic hazard, estimation of the effects of local site
conditions is one of the important task. Very preliminary
process of reducing the effects of earthquake is by assessing
the hazard itself. The national seismic zoning maps which are
prepared in small scales like 1:1,000,000 or less neglect the
factors such as near field effects, directivity, duration,
focusing, topographical and basin effects etc and they does
not consider the geological and geotechnical site conditions.
Aki [3] summarizes the results obtained both in Japan and in
the United States, showing that site amplification depends on
the frequency of the ground motion and that younger softer
soils generally amplify the ground motion relative to older
and more competent soils or bedrock. Findings of the site
amplification and site effects provide a platform for seismic
microzonation process as each soil type responds differently
when it is subjected to ground motion. Seismic microzonation
is one of the fore most steps to minimize seismic related
damages and loss of lives. In this paper the city of
Vijayawada (zone III, Importance factor of 0.16) [4] is
half a million population and is recommended to have Level
III microzonation maps (BMPTC, Govt. of India, UNDP and
MHA). It is also one of the important towns of the Andhra
Pradesh and a major business centre.
TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGICAL
INFORMATION:
Vijayawada is located on the banks of the holy river Krishna
and bounded by the Indrakiladri Hills on the east and west
and the Budameru River on the north. It occupies an area of
about 73 km2 and is located at 16 31’ N latitude and 80 39’ E
longitude. Endowed with a rich variety of soil, it is the 34th
largest town in India (population wise), and the 3rd largest
town in Andhra Pradesh. As per 2001 census, the population
of metropolitan city of Vijayawada is 10,11,152. The
northern, north-western, and south-western parts of the city
are covered by a low range of hills, while the central, south-
western and north-western parts are covered by rich and
fertile agriculture lands with three major irrigation canals.
The topography of Vijayawada is flat, with a few small to
medium sized hills. Three canals originating from the north
side of the Prakasam barriage reservoir, Eluru, Bandar and
Ryves, run through the city. Vijayawada is the only city in
the world with two rivers, Krishna, Budameru, and three
canals.
It has been reported that the damaging effects associated with
soft deposits, may lead to local intensity increments as large
as 2 to 3 degrees in MM scale (Aki and Irikura) [5]. Table 1

1
Akhila Manne, S.Silpa Chowdary & D. Neelima Satyam

gives the intensity increment for different types of geological There are around 22 seismic sources (mainly faults) in and
units given by Medvedev [6]. around Vijayawada in a radius of 300km and among them the
prominent active fault is the Gundlakamma Fault which
Table 1: Intensity Increment for each geological unit trends in a NW-SE (fault length of 76 km, lat (start) 79.51,
long (start) 80.066, lat (end) 15.788, long (end) 16.473;
Lithology MSK Scale SEISAT).
Granites 0.0 There are four types of soils in the Vijayawada area, viz.,
Lime stone Sand Stone Shale 0.2 – 1.3 Black cotton soils (58%), Sandy clay loams (23%), Red
Gypsum, Marl 0.6 – 1.4 loamy soils (17%), and Sandy soils (2%). The sandy soils
Coarse material ground 1.0 – 1.6 form a fringe along the coast. The black cotton soil is most
extensive and occurs in Western part. The sandy clay loams
Sandy Ground 1.2 – 1.8
formed along river. The nature and depth of the soil layers
Clayey Ground 1.2 – 2.1 have a great influence on the intensity at ground level. The
Fill 2.3 – 3.0 curvature of a sediment-filled basin structure in particular can
Moist Ground (gravel, sand, Clay) 1.7 – 2.8 capture body waves and cause some incident body waves to
propagate through the alluvium as surface waves resulting in
Moist fill and Soil ground 3.3 – 3.9
stronger shaking effects and longer duration of strong ground
motion (Kramer) [7].
Vijayawada area has varied lithological formations ranging in
age from Archaean crystallines to recent alluvium.
For the last few decades, several researchers have noted that
Depending upon the occurrence of these rock formations the
groundwater can play a direct role in earthquake occurrence
area can be divided into three lithological provinces. i) The
and earthquake related damage and can magnify the
north and western part occupied by crystalline group of rocks
damaging effects of ground surface. And also from the 2004
comprising of Khondalites, Peninsular gneisses, Dharwars
Indonesian quake it has been observed that GWT can cause
and Proterozoic group of rocks, ii) North-eastern and central
quantifiable changes in locations which are about thousand
part occupied by Sandstones of Gondwana group and
miles from the epicenter (USGS, 2005) .Groundwater level
iii)Eastern and southern part occupied by River and Coastal
influences the ground response significantly and hence
Alluvia
cannot be neglected for site effect analysis.The groundwater
in Vijayawada occurs under water table to semi-confined
SEISMICITY AND GEOTECHNICAL DATA: conditions in the weathered/fractured zones of Khondalites
The exact details of the geological, geomorphologic and and sand zone of Alluvium. The ground water table depth
geotechnical data along with seismiotectonic background and observed to be varying from 0-7 m below ground level.
seismicity are needed to evaluate the ground response and Figure 1 shows the ground water contour map of study
site effects. region.

SPECTRAL AMPLIFICATION FACTOR (SAF):

Figure 1 Ground Water Table Map of Vijayawada Region
The excitation caused in a granular medium cannot be felt
instantly at other points within and it takes time for the
effects of the excitation to be felt at different points. The
effects are felt in the form of waves that travel through the
medium. During earthquakes, the ground motion parameters
such as amplitude of motion, frequency content and
duration of the ground motion change as the seismic waves
propagate through overlying soil and reach the ground
surface. The phenomenon, wherein the local soils act as a
filter and modify the ground motion characteristics, is
known as ‘soil amplification’. The manner in which these
s e i s m i c waves travel is a function of the stiffness and
attenuation characteristics of the medium and will control
the effects they produce. Site amplification factors at sub
surface layers are often used as one of the parameters for
estimation of strong ground motion and improving the
accuracy of the site amplification factors contributes towards
the technology of earthquake disaster mitigation.

2

(a)
(c)
Figure 2 (a), (b), (c), (d) Average Spectral amplification curves at Gunadala, Kanuru, Ramalingeswara Nagar &
Bhavanipuram
ANALYSIS:
The researchers from National Institute for Earth Physics ,in
order to make quantitative evidence of large nonlinear
effects, introduced the spectral amplification factor (SAF) as
ratio between maximum spectral absolute acceleration (Sa),
relative velocity (Sv), relative displacement (Sd) from
response spectra for a fraction of critical damping at
fundamental period and peak values of acceleration
(amax),velocity (vmax) and displacement (dmax), respectively,
from processed strong motion record and pointed out that
there is a strong nonlinear dependence on earthquake
magnitude and site conditions. The spectral amplification
factors (SAF) are finally computed for absolute
accelerations at 5% fraction of critical damping (=5%).
Shima [8] found that the analytically calculated
amplification factor is linearly related with the ratio of shear
wave velocity of the surface layer to that of bedrock. When
the bedrock shear wave velocity is found to be relatively
constant over a wide area, the relative amplification in each
locality can be obtained from the shear wave velocity of the
surface layer.
3
Estimation of site effects for vijayawada city
(b)
(d)
The site amplification factors at each location for Vijayawada
area are found out using windows based computer program,
Degtra A4 which is designed to process ground motion time
histories.The program is written by Mario Ordaz and
Earthquake Engineering faculty of Unam. The software
accepts input ground-motion recordings written in several
formats: simple ASCII or binary files, SEISAN format and
the standard format of the Mexican Strong-Motion Database.
The program has a nice and user-friendly interface, in which
several time-histories can be manipulated at a time. It is set
up with max 16 layers and can be increased to 32 by
recompiling if more layers are needed.
Pitilakis [9] demonstrated the inability of the Vs30 for
estimation of site amplification of soil layers. Particularly
large amplifications of the deep incident wave field are
practically absent when amplification are computed using the
transfer ratio for shallower depths. In this study the actual
engineering rock depth (shear wave velocity equal to 760
m/s; NEHRP) [10] rather than Vs30 is used. Chamba
earthquake ground motion of magnitude 4.9M and PGA of
Akhila Manne, S.Silpa Chowdary & D. Neelima Satyam

0.119g was taken as the strong motion data. Different bore
hole data collected along the stretch of Vijayawada city has
been considered, and the depths, bulk density and shear wave
velocities, damping ratio (5%) of each layer is given as input
for the software. The shear wave velocities of each layer have
been calculated from the corrected SPT ‘N’ value using the
equation 1.
Locations where soil amplification factor ranging from 2.5 to
2 can have moderate damage. SAF less than 2 relatively can
have low level of damage.These results together with studies
on the correlation between weak-motion site amplification
and earthquake intensity demonstrate the importance of in
situ determination of weak motion site amplification for
seismic zonation.

(Neelima Satyam) [8] (1) Table 2: Amplification factors corresponding to different

locations
Where, Vs= shear wave velocity; N=corrected SPT N value
S.No Site Details SAF
The ratio between the amplified site response at the soft soil 1.1 Gunadala 2.5
to the actual time histories at the hard rock site gives the 1.2 Ryves Canal Gunadala 2.4
amplification factor. Figures 2(a), (b), (c) & (d) corresponds 1.3 Bankcolony, Gunadala 3.1
to the SAF curves for different locations. Table 2 refers to the 2.1 5.01
SAF corresponding to each location. Kanuru Panchayat
2.2 3.05
3 A.P Housing Board Colony,Bhavani
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: 4.05
Puram
Many researchers have proved that geotechnical site 4 Ida ,Kondapalli 1.85
conditions play an important role in damage distribution as 5.1 2.2
well as in the recorded strong motion records. Also the Across Eluru Canal, Near
5.2 2
damaging effects associated with soft deposits, may lead to Seethannapeta
5.3 2.15
local intensity increments. In this paper the SAF for different 6.1 Across Bunder Canal, Near 1.55
locations in Vijayawada has been found out. 6.2 Ramalingeswara Nagar 1.6
7.1 Madhugardens,
In the areas of Gunadala, Bhavanipuram silty clay is 2.25
Moghalrajpuram
predominant. In Kanuru and sethannapeta silty clay, sandy 7.2 Sivalayam Street, Moghalirajapuram 2.5
silt is predominant. Kondapalli area is observed to be having
equal amounts of silty clay and silty sand. Ramalingeswara
REFERENCES:
nagar has high amounts of clayey sand .In moghalrajapuram
1. Gutenberg, B. (1957), Effects of ground on earthquake
area clayey sand; sandy silt and rock are found. Soil
motion, BSSA (47), 221-250.
amplification factor for the 14 locations considered are found
2. Borcherdt, R. D. (1970), Effects of local geology on
to be ranging from 1.55 to 5.01. High amplification factors
ground motion near San Francisco Bay, BSSA, (60):29-
(Table 2) are observed in Gundala, Bhavanipuram, Kanuru
61.
locations where predominant soil is silty clay and filled up
3. Aki, K., (1993), Local site effects on weak and strong
soil depth is also high, so these sites may experience severe
ground motion, Tectonophysics, (218), 93– 111.
damage due to earthquake of considerable magnitude.
4. IS: 1893-2002, Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design
of Structures.
5. Aki, K. and Irikura, I. (1991), Characterization and
mapping of earthquake shaking for seismic zonation,
Proc. of the 4th International Conf. on Seismic
Zonation, Stanford, California, Vol. 1, 61–110.
6. Medvedev, J. (1962), Engineering Seismology,
Academia Nauk Press, Moscow, 260.
7. Kramer, S.L. (1996), Geotechnical Earthquake
Engineering, Prentice Hall, New York ..
8. Neelima Satyam, D. (2006), Seismic Microzonation of
Delhi region, Doctoral Theisis, Indian Institute of
Technology Delhi, Delhi, India.
9. Pitilakis, K. (2004), Site effects, Chapter 5, Recent
Advances in Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering and
Microzonation, edited by Ansal, A, Kluwer Academic
Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands, 139-197,
10. Building Seismic Safety Council (2000), NEHRP
Recommended Provisions for Seismic Regulations for
new Buildings and Other Structures, Part 1: Provisions,
Figure 3: Soil Profiles of Different Locations FEMA 38, Washington, D.C.

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