Deterministic Approach for the Seismic Microzonation of Bucharest

Abstract

The mapping of the seismic ground motion in Bucharest, due to the strong Vrancea earthquakes is carried out using a complex hybrid waveform modeling method which combines the modal summation technique, valid for laterally homogeneous anelastic media, with finite-differences technique, and optimizes the advantages of both methods. For recent earthquakes, it is possible to validate the modeling by comparing the synthetic seismograms with the records. We consider for our computations the frequency range from 0.05 to 1.0 Hz and control the synthetic signals against the accelerograms of the Magurele station, low-pass filtered with a cut-off frequency of 1.0 Hz of the 3 last major strong (M w > 6) Vrancea earthquakes. Using the hybrid method with a double-couple seismic source approximation, scaled for the source dimensions and relatively simple regional (bedrock) and local structure models, we succeeded in reproducing the recorded ground motion in Bucharest at a satisfactory level for seismic engineering. Extending the modeling to the entire territory of the Bucharest area, we construct a new seismic microzonation map, where five different zones are identified by their characteristic response spectra.