Ground-motion intensity inferred from upthrow of boulders during the 1984 Western Nagano Prefecture, Japan, earthquake

1992 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-60
Author(s):  
Tatsuo Ohmachi ◽  
Saburoh Midorikawa

Abstract To interpret observations of the upthrow of boulders followed by their remarkable displacement during the 1984 Western Nagano Prefecture, Japan, earthquake, shaking-table experiments, field measurements, and numerical simulations on the upthrow were conducted. First, upthrow of objects was produced during a shaking-table vibration experiment in which table motion was in the horizontal direction only. Next, after field measurements on the ground and boulders were carried out to determine the parameters in the numerical simulations, a series of numerical simulations was conducted using the distinct element method. Both the experimental and numerical approaches not only resulted in reinforcement of Newmark's argument (1973) that the upthrow does not necessarily indicate vertical ground acceleration greater than that of gravity, but further extended it to quantitative assessment of ground-motion intensity.

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Ariaratnam ◽  
K. C. K. Leung

An analytical procedure is presented for the calculation of the statistical properties of the response of a linear elastic tall building under earthquake excitation. Emphasis is placed on the effect of the vertical ground motion. The restoring force in each story of the structural model is assumed to arise from the bending deformation of the columns whose rigidities are subjected to a general reduction due to the combined action of gravitational forces and the random variations due to vertical ground acceleration. Since earthquakes are random phenomena, stochastic modelling of ground motion seems appropriate. Both the vertical and the horizontal accelerations are treated as amplitude-modulated Gaussian random processes. With these models, the techniques developed herein, using the concept of Markov processes and Itô's stochastic differential equations, may be applied. To illustrate the application of the method, numerical results are presented for a six-story building. For computational purposes, the structural properties are evaluated using the finite element method. Within the limit of linear elastic deformation, the vertical ground acceleration is shown to be capable of causing only a slight increase of 0.08% in the lateral displacement for this moderately tall building. The percentage is expected to be larger for a taller building and much larger when the deformations exceed the elastic limit. Key words: earthquake excitation, elastic frames, random vibration, Markov process, dynamic response.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 155014771879461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Wang ◽  
Qimin Li ◽  
Changwei Yang ◽  
Caizhi Zhou

Dynamic response of road embankment under strong earthquake was explored by site investigation, shaking table tests, and discrete element method simulations, which shows that the distribution of responded accelerations strongly depends on the amplitude of input ground motion and the height of road embankment. When the peak ground acceleration of ground motion is small, peak ground acceleration amplification factors will linearly increase from the toe to the top of the slope; then, it will step into non-linear amplification; when the peak ground acceleration of ground motion is large enough, it will transform from amplification to attenuation. There is a logarithmic relationship between the magnitude of acceleration and the slope amplification factor, and the critical acceleration making the peak ground acceleration transform from amplification to attenuation increases with the raise of embankment height and connects with spectral characteristics of ground motion. There is a logarithmic relationship between the input ground acceleration and the amplification ratio of slope top to toe, and the critical acceleration making the peak ground acceleration transform from amplification to attenuation increases with the raise of embankment height and connects with spectral characteristics of ground motion. The results found should be useful for aseismic of road embankment as well as railway subgrade.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 979-1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yousef Bozorgnia ◽  
Kenneth W. Campbell

We summarize the development of the NGA-West2 Bozorgnia-Campbell empirical ground motion model (GMM) for the vertical components of peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and 5%-damped elastic pseudo-absolute acceleration response spectra (PSA) at vertical periods ranging from 0.01 s to 10 s. In the development of the vertical GMM, similar to our 2014 horizontal GMM, we used the extensive PEER NGA-West2 worldwide database. We consider our new vertical GMM to be valid for shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regions for magnitudes ranging from 3.3 to 7.5–8.5, depending on the style of faulting, and for distances as far as 300 km from the fault.


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.


Author(s):  
Roberto Paolucci ◽  
Mauro Aimar ◽  
Andrea Ciancimino ◽  
Marco Dotti ◽  
Sebastiano Foti ◽  
...  

AbstractIn this paper the site categorization criteria and the corresponding site amplification factors proposed in the 2021 draft of Part 1 of Eurocode 8 (2021-draft, CEN/TC250/SC8 Working Draft N1017) are first introduced and compared with the current version of Eurocode 8, as well as with site amplification factors from recent empirical ground motion prediction equations. Afterwards, these values are checked by two approaches. First, a wide dataset of strong motion records is built, where recording stations are classified according to 2021-draft, and the spectral amplifications are empirically estimated computing the site-to-site residuals from regional and global ground motion models for reference rock conditions. Second, a comprehensive parametric numerical study of one-dimensional (1D) site amplification is carried out, based on randomly generated shear-wave velocity profiles, classified according to the new criteria. A reasonably good agreement is found by both approaches. The most relevant discrepancies occur for the shallow soft soil conditions (soil category E) that, owing to the complex interaction of shear wave velocity, soil deposit thickness and frequency range of the excitation, show the largest scatter both in terms of records and of 1D numerical simulations. Furthermore, 1D numerical simulations for soft soil conditions tend to provide lower site amplification factors than 2021-draft, as well as lower than the corresponding site-to-site residuals from records, because of higher impact of non-linear (NL) site effects in the simulations. A site-specific study on NL effects at three KiK-net stations with a significantly large amount of high-intensity recorded ground motions gives support to the 2021-draft NL reduction factors, although the very limited number of recording stations allowing such analysis prevents deriving more general implications. In the presence of such controversial arguments, it is reasonable that a standard should adopt a prudent solution, with a limited reduction of the site amplification factors to account for NL soil response, while leaving the possibility to carry out site-specific estimations of such factors when sufficient information is available to model the ground strain dependency of local soil properties.


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.


Author(s):  
Luigi Lombardo ◽  
Hakan Tanyas

AbstractGround motion scenarios exists for most of the seismically active areas around the globe. They essentially correspond to shaking level maps at given earthquake return times which are used as reference for the likely areas under threat from future ground displacements. Being landslides in seismically actively regions closely controlled by the ground motion, one would expect that landslide susceptibility maps should change as the ground motion patterns change in space and time. However, so far, statistically-based landslide susceptibility assessments have primarily been used as time-invariant.In other words, the vast majority of the statistical models does not include the temporal effect of the main trigger in future landslide scenarios. In this work, we present an approach aimed at filling this gap, bridging current practices in the seismological community to those in the geomorphological and statistical ones. More specifically, we select an earthquake-induced landslide inventory corresponding to the 1994 Northridge earthquake and build a Bayesian Generalized Additive Model of the binomial family, featuring common morphometric and thematic covariates as well as the Peak Ground Acceleration generated by the Northridge earthquake. Once each model component has been estimated, we have run 1000 simulations for each of the 217 possible ground motion scenarios for the study area. From each batch of 1000 simulations, we have estimated the mean and 95% Credible Interval to represent the mean susceptibility pattern under a specific earthquake scenario, together with its uncertainty level. Because each earthquake scenario has a specific return time, our simulations allow to incorporate the temporal dimension into any susceptibility model, therefore driving the results toward the definition of landslide hazard. Ultimately, we also share our results in vector format – a .mif file that can be easily converted into a common shapefile –. There, we report the mean (and uncertainty) susceptibility of each 1000 simulation batch for each of the 217 scenarios.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenming Wang ◽  
David T. Butler ◽  
Edward W. Woolery ◽  
Lanmin Wang

A scenario seismic hazard analysis was performed for the city of Tianshui. The scenario hazard analysis utilized the best available geologic and seismological information as well as composite source model (i.e., ground motion simulation) to derive ground motion hazards in terms of acceleration time histories, peak values (e.g., peak ground acceleration and peak ground velocity), and response spectra. This study confirms that Tianshui is facing significant seismic hazard, and certain mitigation measures, such as better seismic design for buildings and other structures, should be developed and implemented. This study shows that PGA of 0.3 g (equivalent to Chinese intensity VIII) should be considered for seismic design of general building and PGA of 0.4 g (equivalent to Chinese intensity IX) for seismic design of critical facility in Tianshui.


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