Simulation of orthogonal horizontal components of near-fault ground motion for specified earthquake source and site characteristics

Abstract

A procedure to generate horizontal pairs of synthetic near-fault ground motion components for specified earthquake source and site characteristics is presented. Some near-fault ground motions contain a forward directivity pulse; others do not, even when the conditions for such a pulse are favorable. The proposed procedure generates pulse-like and non-pulse-like motions in appropriate proportions. We use our recent stochastic models of pulse-like and non-pulse-like near-fault ground motions that are formulated in terms of physically meaningful parameters. The parameters of these models are fitted to databases of recorded pulse-like and non-pulse-like motions. Using these empirical “observations,” predictive relations are developed for the model parameters in terms of the earthquake source and site characteristics (type of faulting, earthquake magnitude, depth to top of rupture plane, source-to-site distance, site characteristics, and directivity parameters). The correlation coefficients between the model parameters are also estimated. For a given earthquake scenario, the probability of occurrence of a directivity pulse is first computed; pulse-like and non-pulse-like motions are then simulated according to the predicted proportions using the empirical predictive models. The resulting time series are realistic and reproduce important features of recorded near-fault ground motions, including the natural variability. Moreover, the statistics of their elastic response spectra agree with those of the NGA-West2 dataset, with the additional feature of distinguishing between pulse-like and non-pulse-like cases and between forward and backward directivity scenarios. The synthetic motions can be used in addition to or in place of recorded motions in performance-based earthquake engineering, particularly when recorded motions are scarce. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.