Site specific seismic hazard analysis of monumental site Dharahara, Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract

This study was carried out to estimate the seismic requirement for analyzing and designing the monumental structure, Dharahara, in Kathmandu, Nepal. A probabilistic seismic hazard analysis of the study region was performed to develop the elastic response spectrum for the bedrock site. The obtained spectrum was compared with the existing seismic codes, NBC 105:2020 and IS 1893:2016, to estimate the target response spectrum. One-dimensional equivalent linear (EQL) and non-linear (NL) ground response analyses were performed using DEEPSOIL v7, incorporating a suite of ground motions. The three borehole logs exhibited very soft soil in the region. Due to the presence of soft soil strata in the region under study, strength-corrected modulus reduction and damping curves were adopted in the current study to overcome the effect of larger shear strain. The average response spectra from EQL analyses predicted higher values than NL analyses. Finally, a comparison of the proposed design response spectrum with the code spectra was performed. Comparisons revealed that the mean EQL and NL outputs fall in between the design spectra of similar soil classes in NBC 105:2020 and IS 1893:2016 seismic codes.