Site characterization and seismic site response study of the Sahary area, South Egypt

Abstract

The Sahary area is located about 1.5 km west of the Aswan High Dam. This is the nearest urban zone to the main active seismic zone (Kalabsha zone) in South Egypt. The main target of the present study is site characterization and the estimation of seismic site response by using shallow seismic refraction survey and the Nakamura technique (H/V spectral ratio). For this purpose, four shallow seismic refraction profiles and fifteen single station microtremor measurements were carried out distributed to cover the study area. The results showed that, the P-wave velocity of the surface layer ranges from 873 to 1341 m/s and from 2164 to 2467 m/s for the second (bed rock) layer. For the H/V spectral ratio technique it was noticed that most of the sites do not show a clear peak for natural fundamental frequency. All the sites exhibited many peaks that have been interpreted as being related to industrial noise sources due to the fact that the Sahary area has a lot of activities (turbines, generators, trucks, pumps...............etc).