Alternative Title
Paper No. 3.05
Location
St. Louis, Missouri
Date
11 Mar 1998, 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Abstract
The Van Gogh Street School, located in the northern portion of the San Fernando Valley in the City of Los Angeles, suffered damage from the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake having a moment magnitude of 6.7. The school experienced significant cracking in some of the building walls and asphalt paving. The school, located approximately 7 miles from the epicenter, was within a zone of surface cracking coincident with the east-northeast to northeast trending Mission Hills syncline. There was speculation that either fault rupture, liquefaction and/or seismic settlement may have occurred at the school site.
A geotechnical investigation was performed to evaluate the ground cracking at the school. The comprehensive exploratory program consisted of mapping and shallow trenching of the surface cracks, closely spaced cone penetration tests (CPTs} and borings to characterize the stratigraphy of the underlying alluvial materials, and high resolution seismic reflection surveys to map the underlying geologic structure and determine if faults were present within the bedrock. This combination of exploratory tools was utilized simultaneously to provide the necessary data to accurately evaluate the shallow and deep structural and stratigraphic conditions beneath the school site.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
4th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1998 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Kasman, Gerald; Lew, Marshall; and Elliott, Paul, "Investigation of Ground Cracking at the Van Gogh Street School, Granada Hills, California" (1998). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 4.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/4icchge/4icchge-session03/4
Investigation of Ground Cracking at the Van Gogh Street School, Granada Hills, California
St. Louis, Missouri
The Van Gogh Street School, located in the northern portion of the San Fernando Valley in the City of Los Angeles, suffered damage from the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake having a moment magnitude of 6.7. The school experienced significant cracking in some of the building walls and asphalt paving. The school, located approximately 7 miles from the epicenter, was within a zone of surface cracking coincident with the east-northeast to northeast trending Mission Hills syncline. There was speculation that either fault rupture, liquefaction and/or seismic settlement may have occurred at the school site.
A geotechnical investigation was performed to evaluate the ground cracking at the school. The comprehensive exploratory program consisted of mapping and shallow trenching of the surface cracks, closely spaced cone penetration tests (CPTs} and borings to characterize the stratigraphy of the underlying alluvial materials, and high resolution seismic reflection surveys to map the underlying geologic structure and determine if faults were present within the bedrock. This combination of exploratory tools was utilized simultaneously to provide the necessary data to accurately evaluate the shallow and deep structural and stratigraphic conditions beneath the school site.
