Earthquakes are most uncertain and complex to predict. They may occur in any region in the seismic belts across the world. The damage caused by earthquakes is unimaginable and its impact on infrastructure and human beings is difficult to calculate. In order to minimize the damage, various measures have been taken into consideration and implemented in civil engineering structures. India has been divided into various zones based on the severity of the earthquakes of the past. However this zoning refers to a vast area in designing, and hence, an attempt has been made in this paper to carry out a site-specific study of Visakhapatnam, which is placed in seismic Zone II and is one of the rapidly growing cities in Andhra Pradesh, India.

In the present paper, a one-dimensional study was done using EduShake software. EduShake is similar in nature to SHAKE2000, but EduShake has limited inbuilt time histories and limited layers for soil profile. In the present study, the available borelog data with the number of soil layers were sufficient for EduShake.

Shake software was written in the year 1970-71 by Per B Schnabel and John Lysmer, and is most widely used for computing the seismic response of horizontal layers. In India, Govindaraju et al. (2004) used the earlier version of the same software, Shake91, for determining the ground response of Ahmedabad city during Bhuj earthquake in January 26, 2001. Shake91 was also used for micro-zoning of Chennai by Uma et al. (2008).

Edushake was used in this study to evaluate the seismic response of the given site condition. A model problem analyzed with Edushake is known as soil column. The system consists of N horizontal layers, which extend infinitely in horizontal direction and has half space as the bottom layer. Each layer is homogeneous and isotropic, and characterized by thickness, h, unit weight, γ, shear modulus, G, and damping factor, β.

Structural Engineering Journal, Visakhapatnam, Earthquakes, Site Amplification, Peak Ground Acceleration, Predominant Period, Geotechnical Data, Seismic Hazard Analysis, Synthetic Motions, Computer Programs, Fast Fourier Transform, FFT, Nonlinear Methods, Edushake.