GNGTS 2013 - Atti del 32° Convegno Nazionale

Geotechnical model for Santiago de Cuba city Z.C. Rivera 1 , J. García 2 , D. Slejko 3 , A. Medina 4 1 National Centre of Seismological Researches, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba 2 GEM Foundation, Pavia, Italy 3 Ist. Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, Trieste, Italy 4 National Centre of Mineral Resources, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba Introduction. Santiago de Cuba city is located in the south-eastern part of the island, close to the coast and to the major seismogenic fault of the region, the Oriente transform fault system. The largest area of the city is framed in the basin of Santiago de Cuba, the terrain is semi- mountainous and the main geographical feature is a closed basin named Bay. The predominant Quaternary sediments in the superficial layers are represented by sand, gravel, clay, sandstone, marl, and limestone. The bedrock is formed by volcanic and volcanogenic sedimentary rocks of Paleogene age. The city is also crossed by numerous active faults, which can represent a major threat in the case of local amplification depending of the specific soil type. For this reason, several geological, tectonic, geotechnical, and geophysical studies have been carried out in the city during the last years (Perez et al. , 1994; Gonzalez et al. , 1997; Medina et al. , 1999; Fernández et al. , 2000; Zapata, 2000; Rivera, 2000; Méndez et al. , 2001; Alvarez et al. , 2004; García, 2007; Arango et al. , 2009; Rivera et al. , 2011), aimed at defining a correct assessment of seismic hazard, seismic microzonation and site response, considering deep geological sections, soil type maps, and analyzing the geotechnical properties of the terrains. Fig. 1 – Geological map of Santiago de Cuba city, at the scale 1:25,000 (modified from Medina et al. , 1999), the red lines are the superficial projection of the Quaternary faults and the solid dots are the geotechnical boreholes (green) and geological wells (blue) used in the study. 330 GNGTS 2013 S essione 2.2