Abstract
The 2014 M s 6.5 (M w6.1) Ludian earthquake occurred in the eastern Sichuan–Yunnan border region of western China. This earthquake caused much more severe engineering damage than the usual earthquakes with the same magnitude in China. The National Strong Motion Network obtained large set of ground motion recordings during the earthquake. To investigate the engineering interested characteristics of ground motion from Ludian earthquake and compare it with the M w 7.9 Wenchuan and the M w 6.6 Lushan earthquakes in western China, studies on the ground motion field, attenuation relationship, distance dependence of significant duration, and site amplification were carried out. Some conclusion is drawn. Specifically, the ground motion field reveals a directional feature, and the distribution characteristics of the two horizontal components are similar. The attenuation relationship for Ludian earthquake is basically consistent with the ground motion prediction equation (GMPE) for western China, except the slight smaller than the GMPE predicted at short periods. The distance dependences of ground motion duration are different in Sichuan and Yunnan regions due to the local physical dispersion and Q value. The site amplification factors are dominated by linear site response for lower reference ground motion, but the nonlinearity becomes notable for higher reference ground motion. This feature is basically consistent with the empirical model for western China. All the results indicate that the spatial distribution of ground motion, the attenuation characteristics, and the site amplification effect should be considered in characterization of near-field ground motion.
Highlights
The Ms 6.5 (Mw 6.1) Ludian earthquake occurred at 16:30 on August 3, 2014 (UTC+08:00) in Yunnan province, China
The results indicate that the ground motion amplitudes from the 2014 Ms 6.5 Ludian earthquake are basically consistent with the predicted results of the ground motion prediction equation (GMPE) for western China
The National Strong Motion Network obtained series of acceleration recordings, which provided valuable data to be used in the attenuation relationship studies and characterization of ground motions in western China
Summary
The Ms 6.5 (Mw 6.1) Ludian earthquake occurred at 16:30 on August 3, 2014 (UTC+08:00) in Yunnan province, China. In China, due to the lack of strong motion recordings before the great Wenchuan earthquake, the traditional ground motion attenuation relationships were mainly transformed from the seismic intensity attenuation relationships indirectly (Yu and Wang 2006). This transforming method is based on the assumption that there exists a correspondence between the ground motion attenuation and seismic intensity attenuation. The Wenchuan earthquake database was too limited for lacking of earthquake events for 6.0– 7.0 magnitude (Zhang et al 2013), the developed attenuation relationships are basically only applicable for small to moderate magnitude earthquakes Their results can hardly be used in the near fault regions for large earthquakes which are more interested in engineering. These characteristics are compared with those of the Mw 7.9 Wenchuan and Mw 6.6 Lushan earthquakes to study the differences and similarities of strong motion in western China
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