Seismic hazard assessment of Tehran,Iran with emphasis on near-fault rupture directivity effects

Many destructive earthquakes happened in Tehran, Iran in the last centuries. The existence of active faults like the North Tehran is the main cause of seismicity in this city. According to past investigations, it is estimated that in the scenario of activation of the North Tehran fault, many structures in Tehran will collapse. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate the near field rupture directivity effects of this fault into the seismic hazard assessment of important sites in Tehran. In this study, using calculations coded in MATLAB, Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis （PSHA） is conducted for an important site in Tehran. Following that, deaggregation technique is performed on PSHA and the contribution of seis- mic scenarios to hazard is obtained in the range of distance and magnitude. After identifying the North Tehran fault as the most hazardous source affecting the site in 10000-year return period, rupture directivity effects of this fault is incorporated into the seismic hazard assessment using Somerville et al. （1997） model with broadband approach and Shahi and Baker （2011） model with narrowband approach. The results show that the narrowband approach caused a 27% increase in the peak of response spectrum in 10000-year return period compared with the conventional PSHA. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate the near fault rupture directivity effects into the higher levels of seismic hazard assessment attributed to important sites.

Preliminary Study on the Correlation between Intensity Isoseismals and the Seismic Source Process of the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan,China

The M_S8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan caused heavy casualties and serious economic loss because of damage to engineering structures in high earthquake intensity regions. Earthquake intensity, especially in the near source region, as a macroscopic description of distribution of strong ground motions certain correlations with the earthquake source process, such as rupture directivity and the hanging-wall effect of the near-fault ground motions of this earthquake. In this article some qualitative analyses are carried out. The conclusion of this study may be useful for emergence response and rescue after earthquakes, when the strong ground motion recordings and the intensity distribution are not available immediately.

Simulation of Near-Fault Strong Ground Motion in the Beijing Region

On the basis of previous study of the 1679 Sanhe-Pinggu(M8.0) earthquake,the biggest event in history ever recorded in Beijing and its adjacent area,we made a 3-D strong ground motion simulation utilizing the staggered-grid finite differences method to study the distributions of peak ground velocity with different earthquake source models in the Beijing region.In the paper,earthquake source models and a transmission medium velocity model are established and the corresponding parameters are given in accordance to the results from a related previous study.Then,using a three-dimensional finite difference computing program of near-fault strong ground motion developed by Graves,the peak ground velocity caused by a destructive earthquake in the Beijing area is simulated.In our computation model,the earthquake source is 3km in depth,and a total number of 21,679 observation points on the ground surface are figured out.The transmission medium velocity model is composed of four stratums which are the Quaternary deposit,the upper crust,the upper part of the middle crust and the lower part of the middle crust.With the minimum grid spacing of 0.15km,a total of 2.28×106 grids are generated.Using a time step of 0.02 seconds we calculated the peak ground velocity for a duration of 8 seconds.After the analysis of the simulation results,we observed some basic characteristics of near-fault strong ground motion such as the concentration effect of near-fault peak ground velocity,rupture directivity effect,hanging wall effect,and basin effect.The results from our simulation and analysis suggest that the source and transmitting medium parameters in our model are suitable and the finite difference method is applicable to estimate the distribution of strong ground motion in the study region.