Recorded Ground Motion and Estimated Soil Amplification for the 11 May 2011 Lorca Earthquake

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 2301-2323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myriam Belvaux ◽  
Albert Macau ◽  
Sara Figueras ◽  
Xavier Goula ◽  
Teresa Susagna

On 11 May 2011 an earthquake of magnitude 5.2 ( M w) hit the Murcia region of Spain causing significant damage to buildings in the town of Lorca. Accelerograms were recorded by stations of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional, and high-amplitude ground motions were observed at the Lorca station, with a peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.37 g. The contribution of a near-field component of ground motion is shown in time histories and in elastic response spectra. Features of near-field ground motions such as directivity could have significantly enhanced the ground shaking caused by this event. Local amplification effects in Lorca were investigated by the H/V spectral ratio technique and an array method. Information obtained from the geophysical field survey allowed the definition of representative soil columns and site classifications according to Eurocode 8. Modeling of site response is conducted for an example location. The aftershocks recorded at different sites confirm the soil amplification at these locations.

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 1530-1548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace A. Parker ◽  
Annemarie S. Baltay ◽  
John Rekoske ◽  
Eric M. Thompson

ABSTRACT We use a large instrumental dataset from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence (Rekoske et al., 2019, 2020) to examine repeatable source-, path-, and site-specific ground motions. A mixed-effects analysis is used to partition total residuals relative to the Boore et al. (2014; hereafter, BSSA14) ground-motion model. We calculate the Arias intensity stress drop for the earthquakes and find strong correlation with our event terms, indicating that they are consistent with source processes. We look for physically meaningful trends in the partitioned residuals and test the ability of BSSA14 to capture the behavior we observe in the data. We find that BSSA14 is a good match to the median observations for M>4. However, we find bias for individual events, especially those with small magnitude and hypocentral depth≥7  km, for which peak ground acceleration is underpredicted by a factor of 2.5. Although the site amplification term captures the median site response when all sites are considered together, it does not capture variations at individual stations across a range of site conditions. We find strong basin amplification in the Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Gabriel basins. We find weak amplification in the San Bernardino basin, which is contrary to simulation-based findings showing a channeling effect from an event with a north–south azimuth. This and an additional set of ground motions from earthquakes southwest of Los Angeles suggest that there is an azimuth-dependent southern California basin response related to the orientation of regional structures when ground motion from waves traveling south–north are compared with those in the east–west direction. These findings exhibit the power of large, spatially dense ground-motion datasets and make clear that nonergodic models are a way to reduce bias and uncertainty in ground-motion estimation for applications like the U.S. Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Model and the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning System.


1991 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-732
Author(s):  
M. Niazi ◽  
Y. Bozorgnia

Abstract Over 700 accelerograms recorded from 12 earthquakes in northeast Taiwan have been analyzed for investigating the behavior of vertical and horizontal peak and spectral ground motion in the near-source region. Peak horizontal and vertical ground acceleration (PGA), velocity (PGV), and displacement (PGD) in the range of engineering interest have been subjected to a two-step nonlinear regression procedure in terms of magnitude and hypocentral distance. In comparison with a number of other studies of global PGA observations, our predictions show lower far-field attenuation, lower near-source amplitudes, higher magnitude saturation for the vertical component, lower magnitude saturation for the horizontal component, and higher magnitude scaling. The 2 / 3 ratio of vertical to horizontal ground motion, commonly used in engineering applications, may be unconservative in the very near-field for high-frequency ground motion. It falls below 1 / 2 at distances greater than 50 km. The same ratio for PGV and PGD tends to increase with distance, the latter at a faster rate. For SMART-1 data the major source of uncertainty appears to be inter-event rather than intra-event randomness. The predominance of the inter-event uncertainty in ground motions near the source is expected to be a characteristic of all dense arrays.


2021 ◽  
pp. 875529302110194
Author(s):  
Daniel Verret ◽  
Denis LeBœuf ◽  
Éric Péloquin

Eastern North America (ENA) is part of a region with low-to-moderate seismicity; nonetheless, some significant seismic events have occurred in the last few decades. Recent events have reemphasized the need to review ENA seismicity and ground motion models, along with continually reevaluating and updating procedures related to the seismic safety assessment of hydroelectric infrastructures, particularly large dams in Québec. Furthermore, recent researchers have shown that site-specific characteristics, topography, and valley shapes may significantly aggravate the severity of ground motions. To the best of our knowledge, very few instrumental data from actual earthquakes have been published for examining the site effects of hydroelectric dam structures located in eastern Canada. This article presents an analysis of three small earthquakes that occurred in 1999 and 2002 at the Denis-Perron (SM-3) dam. This dam, the highest in Québec, is a rockfill embankment structure with a height of 171 m and a length of 378 m; it is located in a narrow valley. The ground motion datasets of these earthquakes include the bedrock and dam crest three-component accelerometer recordings. Ground motions are analyzed both in the time and frequency domains. The spectral ratios and transfer functions obtained from these small earthquakes provide new insights into the directionality of resonant frequencies, vibration modes, and site effects for the Denis-Perron dam. The crest amplifications observed for this dam are also compared with previously published data for large dams. New statistical relationships are proposed to establish dam crest amplification on the basis of the peak ground acceleration (PGA) at the foundation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002029402110130
Author(s):  
Guan Chen ◽  
Zhiren Zhu ◽  
Jun Hu

This study proposed a simple and effective response spectrum-compatible ground motions simulation method to mitigate the scarcity of ground motions on seismic hazard analysis base on wavelet-based multi-resolution analysis. The feasibility of the proposed method is illustrated with two recorded ground motions in El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake. The results show that the proposed method enriches the ground motions exponentially. The simulated ground motions agree well with the attenuation characteristics of seismic ground motion without modulating process. Moreover, the pseudo-acceleration response spectrum error between the recorded ground motion and the average of the simulated ground motions is 5.2%, which fulfills the requirement prescribed in Eurocode 8 for artificially simulated ground motions. Besides, the cumulative power spectra between the simulated and recorded ground motions agree well on both high- and low-frequency regions. Therefore, the proposed method offers a feasible alternative in enriching response spectrum-compatible ground motions, especially on the regions with insufficient ground motions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 1773-1788 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Ç. İnce ◽  
L. Yılmazoğlu

Abstract. In this work, the surface ground motion that occurs during an earthquake in ground sections having different topographic forms has been examined with one and two dynamic site response analyses. One-dimensional analyses were undertaken using the Equivalent-Linear Earthquake Response Analysis (EERA) program based on the equivalent linear analysis principle and the Deepsoil program which is able to make both equivalent linear and nonlinear analyses and two-dimensional analyses using the Plaxis 8.2 software. The viscous damping parameters used in the dynamic site response analyses undertaken with the Plaxis 8.2 software were obtained using the DeepSoil program. In the dynamic site response analyses, the synthetic acceleration over a 475-year return period representing the earthquakes in Istanbul was used as the basis of the bedrock ground motion. The peak ground acceleration obtained different depths of soils and acceleration spectrum values have been compared. The surface topography and layer boundaries in the 5-5' cross section which cuts across the study area west to east were selected in order to examine the effect of the land topography and layer boundaries on the analysis results, and were flattened and compared with the actual status. The analysis results showed that the characteristics of the surface ground motion change in relation to the varying local soil conditions and land topography.


2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Bozzoni ◽  
Carlo Giovanni Lai ◽  
Laura Scandella

The preliminary results are presented herein for the engineering applications of the characteristics of the ground motion induced by the May 20, 2012, Emilia earthquake. Shake maps are computed to provide estimates of the spatial distribution of the induced ground motion. The signals recorded at the Mirandola (MRN) station, the closest to the epicenter, have been processed to obtain acceleration, velocity and displacement response spectra. Ground-motion parameters from the MRN recordings are compared with the corresponding estimates from recent ground-motion prediction equations, and with the spectra prescribed by the current Italian Building Code for different return periods. The records from the MRN station are used to plot the particle orbit (hodogram) described by the waveform. The availability of results from geotechnical field tests that were performed at a few sites in the Municipality of Mirandola prior to this earthquake of May 2012 has allowed preliminary assessment of the ground response. The amplification effects at Mirandola are estimated using fully stochastic site-response analyses. The seismic input comprises seven actual records that are compatible with the Italian code-based spectrum that refers to a 475-year return period. The computed acceleration response spectrum and the associated dispersion are compared to the spectra calculated from the recordings of the MRN station. Good agreement is obtained for periods up to 1 s, especially for the peak ground acceleration. For the other periods, the spectral acceleration of the MRN recordings exceeds that of the computed spectra.<br />


An effective earthquake (Mw 7.9) struck Alaska on 3 November, 2002. This earthquake ruptured 340 km along Susitna Glacier, Denali and Totschunda faults in central Alaska. The peak ground acceleration (PGA) was recorded about 0.32 g at station PS10, which was located 3 km from the fault rupture. The PGA would have recorded a high value, if more instruments had been installed in the region. A numerical study has been conducted to find out the possible ground motion record that could occur at maximum horizontal slip during the Denali earthquake. The current study overcomes the limitation of number of elements to model the Denali fault. These numerical results are compared with observed ground motions. It is observed that the ground motions obtained through numerical analysis are in good agreement with observed ground motions. From numerical results, it is observed that the possible expected PGA is 0.62 g at maximum horizontal slip of Denali fault.


1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Rizzo ◽  
N. R. Vaidya ◽  
E. Bazan ◽  
C. F. Heberling

Comparisons of response spectra from near and far-field records to those estimated by attenuation functions commonly used in evaluating seismic hazards show that these functions provide reasonable results for near-field western North American sites. However, they estimate relatively small motions for far-field eastern North American sites, which is contrary to the empirical evidence of the 1886 Charleston and 1988 Saguenay Earthquakes. Using the 1988 Saguenay records scaled for magnitude, and several western North American records scaled to account for the slower attenuation in the east, we have developed deterministic median and 84th percentile, 5 percent damped response spectra to represent ground motions from a recurrence of the 1886 Charleston Earthquake at a distance between 85 to 120 km. The resulting 84th percentile spectrum has a shape similar to, but is less severe than, the USNRC Regulatory Guide 1.60 5 percent damped spectrum tied to a peak ground acceleration of 0.2g.


2000 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Yang ◽  
Tadanobu Sato ◽  
Xiang-Song Li

Recently there has been an increased interest in the study of the nonlinearity in soil response for large strains through in situ earthquake observations. In this paper, the downhole array acceleration data recorded at a reclaimed island, Kobe, during the 1995 Kobe earthquake are used to study nonlinear site effects. Particular attention is given to the liquefaction-induced nonlinear effects on the recorded ground motions. By using the spectral ratio and the spectral-smoothing technique, the characteristics of the ground motions are analyzed. It is shown that the peak frequencies in spectral ratios were shifted to lower frequencies when the strongest motions occurred. The increase in the predominant period was caused primarily by a strong attenuation of low-period waves, rather than by amplification of long-period motions. Based on the spectral analyses, the nonlinearity occurring in the shallow liquefied layer during the shaking event is identified, manifested by a significant reduction of the shear modulus. A fully coupled, inelastic, finite element analysis of the response of the array site is carried out. The stress-strain histories of soils and excess pore-water pressures at different depths are calculated. It is suggested that the stress-strain response and the build up of pore pressure are well correlated to the variation of the characteristics of ground motions during the shaking history.Key words: site response, ground motion, nonlinearity, soil liquefaction, array records, Kobe earthquake.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 1623-1638 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Roy ◽  
P. Thakur ◽  
S. Chakroborty

In the context of performance-based seismic design (PBSD), ground motions are often scaled to certain convenient target spectra derived from probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). While Uniform Hazard Spectrum (UHS) is more widely used, Conditional Mean Spectrum (CMS) is recently proposed to be more desirable for scaling of real accelerograms. In this backdrop, a set of near-field and far-field ground motions are spectrally scaled, using wavelets, to both UHS and CMS. Seismic demand of horizontally irregular structures under bi-directional ground motion is assessed under both scaled and seed records in the elastic range. Spectral matching, within limits, of both the horizontal components of real records to a single hazard spectrum is observed to adequately predict the amplification in response due to asymmetry (at least for the records and target spectra relevant to soil class D). Further, such scaling effectively reduces the variability in predicted magnification from one ground motion to other. Dynamic amplification factors recommended in international codes to apply in equivalent static design of asymmetric systems are shown to be deficient.


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