Behaviour of Precariously Balanced Rocks under Seismic Excitation

Abstract

A naturally occurring geological formation is precariously balanced rocks (PBRs) which might easily topple by an earthquake with severe ground motion. These rocks have been at the same place for many years. Strong ground accelerations have not occurred in the area for thousands of years as shown by the zone of unstable rocks. So, they are significant in both the engineering and seismological domains since they provide source of data for the maximum earthquake ground motion occurring at a site over the rock’s life time. The precariously balanced rock taken for this study is Krishna Butter Ball which is in Mahabalipuram, Chengalpattu district. In the numerical analysis, the peak ground acceleration at which the Krishna butter ball may topple is obtained. To identify the possible future earthquake, deterministic seismic hazard analysis has been carried out for Chengalpattu district. For this analysis, fault details have been obtained from Geological Survey of India. Arc map 10.1 version in Geographical Information System (GIS) platform is used for the interpretation of data like fault length, source (fault) to site (Mahabalipuram) distance from the fault details given by GSI. From the results of Deterministic Seismic Hazard Analysis (DSHA), it is observed that the possible future earthquake may have the magnitude in the range of 6.03 to 7.9. The computed peak ground acceleration (PGA) value corresponding to those magnitude ranges from 0.027g to 0.49g. The maximum PGA value 0.49g corresponds to the Palar river fault which is just 28.53 km away from the Krishna butter ball. From the results of numerical analysis, the behavior of Krishna butter ball for three different PGA i.e. 0.05g, 0.1g, 0.15g has been observed. Newmark sliding block analysis said that the rock may topple at the PGA of 0.35g. From this it can be concluded that the toppling acceleration of Krishna butter ball is relatively low.