Microzonation Analysis of Cohesionless and Cohesive Soil

¹ Faculty of Engineering, UCSI University, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
² Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: cstan@ucsiuniversity.edu.my

Abstract

Urban seismic risk is a continuous worldwide issue, numerous researchers are putting great effort in dealing with how to minimise the level of the threat. The only way to minimise the social and economic consequences caused but the seismic risk is through comprehensive earthquake scenario analysis such as ground response analysis. This paper intends to examine the characteristic of shear wave velocity and peak ground acceleration on cohesionless and cohesiveness soil. In order to examine the characteristic of shear wave velocity and peak ground acceleration on cohesionless and cohesiveness soil, ground response analysis was performed using Nonlinear Earthquake Site Response Analysis (NERA) and Equivalent-linear Earthquake Site Response Analysis (EERA). The value of ground acceleration was initially high at bedrock and vanishes during the propagation process. It is thus, the measured acceleration at surface is therefore much lower as compare to at bedrock. Result shows that seismic waves can travel faster in harder soil as compared to softer soil. Cohesive soil contributes more to the shaking amplification than cohesionless soil such as sand and harder soil. This is known as local site effect. The typical example is the Mexico Earthquake that happened in 1985. As conclusion, peak ground acceleration for cohesive soil is higher than in cohesionless soil.