Engineering Characteristics of Ground Motion Records from the 2010 Mw7.2 El Mayor–Cucapah Earthquake in Mexico

Abstract

This paper presents an engineering analysis of ground motion records from the 2010 El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake. Spectral accelerations from the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake are also compared with NGA Boore and Atkinson 2008 (BA08) and SEA99 ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs). Both GMPEs predict slower distance attenuation than demonstrated by the 2010 earthquake but capture distance attenuation shown by the 1979 earthquake. Intra-event residuals of both GMPEs relative to the 2010 earthquake data exhibit larger scattering than the 1979 earthquake data. H/V ratios indicate that some soft-soil sites show predominant site periods of about 0.4 to 0.7 seconds, but the remaining sites show lengthened predominant periods of about 1.0 to 2.0 seconds. Rock sites show no pronounced predominant periods despite the presence of a weak H/V ratio peak at 0.2 seconds.