Wavelet-based response spectrum compatible synthesis of accelerograms-Eurocode application (EC8)

An integrated approach for addressing the problem of synthesizing artificial seismic accelerograms compatible with a given displacement design/target spectrum is presented in conjunction with aseismic design applications. Initially, a stochastic dynamics solution is used to obtain a family of simulated non-stationary earthquake records whose response spectrum is on the average in good agreement with the target spectrum. The degree of the agreement depends significantly on the adoption of an appropriate parametric evolutionary power spectral form, which is related to the target spectrum in an approximate manner. The performance of two commonly used spectral forms along with a newly proposed one is assessed with respect to the elastic displacement design spectrum defined by the European code regulations (EC8). Subsequently, the computational versatility of the family of harmonic wavelets is employed to modify iteratively the simulated records to satisfy the compatibility criteria for artificial accelerograms prescribed by EC8. In the process, baseline correction steps, ordinarily taken to ensure that the obtained accelerograms are characterized by physically meaningful velocity and displacement traces, are elucidated. Obviously, the presented approach can be used not only in the case of the EC8, for which extensive numerical results/examples are included, but also for any code provisions mandated by regulatory agencies. In any case, the presented numerical results can be quite useful in any aseismic design process dominated by the EC8 specifications

Synthesis of accelerograms compatible with the Chinese GB 50011-2001 design spectrum via harmonic wavelets: artificial and historic records

A versatile approach is employed to generate artificial accelerograms which satisfy the compatibility criteria prescribed by the Chinese aseismic code provisions GB 50011-2001. In particular, a frequency dependent peak factor derived by means of appropriate Monte Carlo analyses is introduced to relate the GB 50011-2001 design spectrum to a parametrically defined evolutionary power spectrum (EPS). Special attention is given to the definition of the frequency content of the EPS in order to accommodate the mathematical form of the aforementioned design spectrum. Further, a one-to-one relationship is established between the parameter controlling the time-varying intensity of the EPS and the effective strong ground motion duration. Subsequently, an efficient auto-regressive moving-average (ARMA) filtering technique is utilized to generate ensembles of non-stationary artificial accelerograms whose average response spectrum is in a close agreement with the considered design spectrum. Furthermore, a harmonic wavelet based iterative scheme is adopted to modify these artificial signals so that a close matching of the signals’ response spectra with the GB 50011-2001 design spectrum is achieved on an individual basis. This is also done for field recorded accelerograms pertaining to the May, 2008 Wenchuan seismic event. In the process, zero-phase high-pass filtering is performed to accomplish proper baseline correction of the acquired spectrum compatible artificial and field accelerograms. Numerical results are given in a tabulated format to expedite their use in practice

Shake Table Experiments on Multi-Story Aluminum Structures Using Scaled Ground Motions.

A shake table is a device used to simulate the seismic waves during an earthquake event and test the stability of the structure after an event. This table can be helpful in testing structural components or models. The primary objective of this study is to operate and verify the functionality of the shake table present at the Department of Civil Engineering’s structure research lab. The System Communication Software (SCSW), present at the University of Memphis’s Department of Civil Engineering lab, operates the shake table unidirectionally and requires ground motions to be uploaded to the software. Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) provides strong ground motion data that was used to extract several ground motions for selection and scaling purposes for the study. As per ASCE 7-16, Chapter 16.2, non-linear response history analysis is applied to select and scale the motions. In addition to the ASCE provisions, the Spectral-Matching procedure in the frequency domain is practiced in scaling or matching of the ground motions for this study. The ground motions to be uploaded needs to be either load or displacement controlled. The extracted scaled ground motions as acceleration time histories are converted into displacement time histories and are uploaded to the SCSW software to control the shake table to displace. The scaled models are mounted on the shake table using bolted connections. Accelerometers are clamped on every story of the scaled model to measure the acceleration while being subjected to scaled ground motion. The data acquired from the accelerometers are raw, unprocessed, and thus need to be filtered for unwanted components or noise. The final processed and corrected accelerations are then compared with the output response at every story of all the scaled models from the 2D SAP2000 model for validation of the functionality of the shake table

GPS source solution of the 2004 Parkfield earthquake

We compute a series of finite-source parameter inversions of the fault rupture of the 2004 Parkfield earthquake based on 1 Hz GPS records only. We confirm that some of the co-seismic slip at shallow depth (<5 km) constrained by InSAR data processing results from early post-seismic deformation. We also show 1) that if located very close to the rupture, a GPS receiver can saturate while it remains possible to estimate the ground velocity (~1.2 m/s) near the fault, 2) that GPS waveforms inversions constrain that the slip distribution at depth even when GPS monuments are not located directly above the ruptured areas and 3) the slip distribution at depth from our best models agree with that recovered from strong motion data. The 95th percentile of the slip amplitudes for rupture velocities ranging from 2 to 5 km/s is, 55 +/- 6 cm.Comment: 24 pages including supp. material

Zero baseline correction of strong-motion accelerograms

A new method is proposed for standard baseline correction of strong-motion accelerograms. It is based on high-pass filtering of the uncorrected digitized accelerogram data. Unlike the parabolic baseline correction, the new method has well-defined frequency transfer function properties which are largely independent of the record length

Nonstationary Stochastic Simulation of Strong Ground-Motion Time Histories : Application to the Japanese Database

For earthquake-resistant design, engineering seismologists employ time-history analysis for nonlinear simulations. The nonstationary stochastic method previously developed by Pousse et al. (2006) has been updated. This method has the advantage of being both simple, fast and taking into account the basic concepts of seismology (Brune's source, realistic time envelope function, nonstationarity and ground-motion variability). Time-domain simulations are derived from the signal spectrogram and depend on few ground-motion parameters: Arias intensity, significant relative duration and central frequency. These indicators are obtained from empirical attenuation equations that relate them to the magnitude of the event, the source-receiver distance, and the site conditions. We improve the nonstationary stochastic method by using new functional forms (new surface rock dataset, analysis of both intra-event and inter-event residuals, consideration of the scaling relations and VS30), by assessing the central frequency with S-transform and by better considering the stress drop variability.Comment: 10 pages; 15th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Lisbon : Portugal (2012

SEIS: Insight's Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure of Mars.

By the end of 2018, 42 years after the landing of the two Viking seismometers on Mars, InSight will deploy onto Mars' surface the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure) instrument; a six-axes seismometer equipped with both a long-period three-axes Very Broad Band (VBB) instrument and a three-axes short-period (SP) instrument. These six sensors will cover a broad range of the seismic bandwidth, from 0.01&nbsp;Hz to 50&nbsp;Hz, with possible extension to longer periods. Data will be transmitted in the form of three continuous VBB components at 2 sample per second (sps), an estimation of the short period energy content from the SP at 1&nbsp;sps and a continuous compound VBB/SP vertical axis at 10&nbsp;sps. The continuous streams will be augmented by requested event data with sample rates from 20 to 100 sps. SEIS will improve upon the existing resolution of Viking's Mars seismic monitoring by a factor of ∼ 2500 at 1&nbsp;Hz and ∼ 200 000 at 0.1&nbsp;Hz. An additional major improvement is that, contrary to Viking, the seismometers will be deployed via a robotic arm directly onto Mars' surface and will be protected against temperature and wind by highly efficient thermal and wind shielding. Based on existing knowledge of Mars, it is reasonable to infer a moment magnitude detection threshold of M w ∼ 3 at 40 ∘ epicentral distance and a potential to detect several tens of quakes and about five impacts per year. In this paper, we first describe the science goals of the experiment and the rationale used to define its requirements. We then provide a detailed description of the hardware, from the sensors to the deployment system and associated performance, including transfer functions of the seismic sensors and temperature sensors. We conclude by describing the experiment ground segment, including data processing services, outreach and education networks and provide a description of the format to be used for future data distribution.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11214-018-0574-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Record Processing in ITACA, the New Italian Strong-Motion Database

The development of the new Italian strong-motion database ITACA (ITalian AC-celerometric Archive, http://itaca.mi.ingv.it) is in progress under the sponsorship of the National Department of Civil Protection (DPC) within Project S4, in the framework of DPC-INGV 2007–2009 research agreement. This work started from the alpha version of ITACA [8], where 2,182 3-component records from 1,004 earthquakes, mainly recorded by the National Accelerometric Network, RAN, operated by DPC, were processed and included in the database. Earthquake metadata, recording station information and reports on the available geologicalgeophysical information of 452 recording sites, corresponding to about 70% of the total, were also included. Subsequently, ITACA has been updated and will reach its final stage by the end of Project S4, around mid-2010, with additional features, improved information about recording stations, and updated records, including the Mw6.3 L’Aquila earthquake. All records were re-processed with respect to the alpha version [9], with a special care to preserve information about late-triggered events and to ensure compatibility of corrected records, i.e., velocity and displacement traces obtained by the first and second integral of the corrected acceleration should not be affected by unrealistic trends. After a short introduction of ITACA and its most relevant features and statistics, this paper mainly deals with the newly adopted processing scheme, with reference to the problems encountered and the solutions that have been devised

Performance of Several Low‐Cost Accelerometers

Several groups are implementing low-cost host-operated systems of strong-motion accelerographs to support the somewhat divergent needs of seismologists and earthquake engineers. The Advanced National Seismic System Technical Implementation Committee (ANSS TIC, 2002), managed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with other network operators, is exploring the efficacy of such systems if used in ANSS networks. To this end, ANSS convened a working group to explore available Class C strong-motion accelerometers (defined later), and to consider operational and quality control issues, and the means of annotating, storing, and using such data in ANSS networks. The working group members are largely coincident with our author list, and this report informs instrument-performance matters in the working group’s report to ANSS. Present examples of operational networks of such devices are the Community Seismic Network (CSN; csn.caltech.edu), operated by the California Institute of Technology, and Quake-Catcher Network (QCN; Cochran et al., 2009; qcn.stanford.edu; November 2013), jointly operated by Stanford University and the USGS. Several similar efforts are in development at other institutions. The overarching goals of such efforts are to add spatial density to existing Class-A and Class-B (see next paragraph) networks at low cost, and to include many additional people so they become invested in the issues of earthquakes, their measurement, and the damage they cause

The engineering strong-motion database: A platform to access pan-European accelerometric data

This article describes the Engineering Strong-Motion Database (ESM), developed in the framework of the European project Network of European Research Infrastructures for Earthquake Risk Assessment and Mitigation (NERA, see Data and Resources). ESM is specifically designed to provide end users only with quality-checked, uniformly processed strong-motion data and relevant parameters and has done so since 1969 in the EuroMediterranean region. The database was designed for a large variety of stakeholders (expert seismologists, earthquake engineers, students, and professionals) with a user-friendly and straightforward web interface. Users can access earthquake and station information and download waveforms of events with magnitude 65 4:0 (unprocessed and processed acceleration, velocity, and displacement, and acceleration and displacement response spectra at 5% damping). Specific tools are also available to users to process strong-motion data and select ground-motion suites for codebased seismic structural analyses