CEE 559 EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING

The 2011 Central Virginia Earthquake

BY:
KUNJAL CHHAYA (1209862807)

Scientific Overview of the Earthquake

08/23/2011 one of the largest earthquake in the eastern US.

Mw 5.8, intraplate earthquake, reverse slip with maximum perceived intensity

of VII(very strong) on the Mercalli intensity scale and a PGA of 0.26g.

Epicenter town of Mineral, Virginia, 65km northwest of Richmond,

Virginia at a depth of about 6 8km .

Widely felt from Maine to Georgia, west to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago

and southeastern Canada..

Total economic loss: $200 - $300 million, including millions of dollars in

damage to the National Cathedral, The Washington monument, DC and
about 600 residential properties.

Several aftershocks, the first four (2.8 , 2.2 , 4.2 and 3.4) occurring within 12
hours of the main shock followed by the strongest 4.5 magnitude.

The CVSZ - Geology

The tectonic stresses -primarily compressive.
Still to date - difficult to determine if a known
fault is still active and could slip and cause an
earthquake.
The USGS director Marcia McNutt said "What makes this new study so
unique is that it provides direct
observational evidence from the largest
earthquake to occur in more than 100
years in the eastern U.S. Now that we
know more about the power of East Coast
earthquakes, equations that predict
ground shaking might need to be
revised."

Geotechnical effects of the earthquake

sand boils in the S. Anna River riverbed

cross-sectional cut through one of the

sand boil found across the road

near Yancy Mill

sand boils in the S. Anna River riverbed.

(feature found by Ed Harp, USGS)

(features found by Jeff Munsey, TVA)

The liquefied soil was coarse sand. The river bed was gravelly and the water table was only an inch below the ground
surface, so that when a cut was made for investigation, it was immediately filled with water.
After the grain size analysis and the Dynamic cone penetration tests at the site, it was concluded that the soil had some
plasticity and the sand boils would not have penetrated on the ground surface in absence of an pre-existing hole.

Geotechnical effects of the earthquake Contd

Riverbank Slumps.
Subsidence.
Rock falls.
Slump in the bank of the S.

Rock

fall along Vigor Rd, near the

Anna River near the Yancy Mill.

intersection

with Yanceyville Rd

Power.
Pipelines.
Landfill.
abandoned gold mine, Photo : Mark Carter, USGS.
10km from epicenter.

Louisa County landfill,

Other Damages due to the earthquake

In Prince William County, the temblor damaged the 85-year-old Lake Jackson dam, rendering
it inoperable and causing much of the lake to drain away.
The National Cathedral suffered about US$20 million in structural damage.
At the Washington Monument, much of the damage was confined to the pyramid-shaped top
of the 169-metre-tall obelisk. Donald Wells, an engineering geologist at AMEC, a consulting
firm in Oakland, California, says his teams models suggest that passing seismic waves
vibrated the tall, slim monument like a tuning fork.
Bridges :
Yanceyville Road Bridge
2.5 cm gap between one of the SE
piers & soil

North Anna Nuclear Power Plant

The plant detected a slight power reduction because of the vibrations in the reactor or
monitoring devices which caused two nuclear reactors to shut down immediately.
The plant was designed for a safe shut down earthquake of 0.12g but the ground motion was
recorded as 0.27g which is more than double.
The plant was not majorly damaged just because of the robustness in the seismic design.

Highlights of the scientific findings

The mapped seismic hazard associated with CVSZ is still underestimated..
Low period energy content in the East coast US ground motions may not be captured
adequately in current seismic hazard characterization.
Unreinforced masonry buildings are dangerous in earthquakes. No laws have been
enacted on the east coast to retrofit URM structures.
Schools in the epicentral area were found to be more susceptible to damage than typical
buildings. It could be argued that school structures should be designed to satisfy a higher
seismic performance standard than typical buildings.
Both scientific numerical modeling and the aftershock locations define a 10-km-long fault
rupture plane trending N28E and inclined 50ESE. This new fault zone has been named
the Quail fault zone.

 Low-altitude geophysical (gravity and magnetic) flight surveys in 2012 over the epicenter
unveiled not only one fault, which is roughly aligned with a fault defined by the earthquakes
aftershocks, but a second fault or contact between different rock types that comes in at an
angle to the first one, forming a fault crossroads that may concentrate stresses and lead to the
earthquake that had a 3-part rupture: first, a small initial rupture at about 8km depth then, 0.75
seconds later a larger subsequent rupture, which accounted for about 60% of total energy
release, and finally, a smaller rupture 1.75 seconds after the onset of the earthquake. No clear
evidence of surface rupture has been found so far.
Outlying aftershocks were triggered on a nearby fault roughly delineating other structures that
were previously unknown.
The seismic waves were focused along a northeasterly trend parallel to (and probably
somewhat guided by) the Appalachian geologic structure toward Washington D.C., Baltimore,
Philadelphia and New York.
Similar to the DYFI felt reports, recordings from the 2011 central Virginia earthquake at USGS
(and its partners) seismograph stations in the eastern U.S., showed that the crustal rocks are
especially efficient at transmitting seismic waves. This well-observed characteristic of eastern
U.S. earthquakes permits them to cause felt shaking and damage over a broader area.

THANK YOU