Improved methods for synthesizing near-fault ground motions based on specific response spectrum

Abstract

An increasing number of civil structures are being built near or across earthquake faults, making them more susceptible to severe seismic damage due to the presence of large velocity pulses in near-fault ground motions (NFGMs). Because of limited availability of NFGMs records, synthesized NFGMs are necessary for seismic designing of structures located around near-fault areas. Based on the far-field synthesis of ground motions (GMs), various methods for synthesizing NFGMs by superimposing high-frequency and low-frequency components in the time domain have been developed. However, such techniques suffer from wider variation in the response spectrum between the synthesized NFGMs and the target spectrum. To address this issue, a new approach for synthesizing NFGMs has been proposed. This approach investigates key parameters of the response spectrum for NFGMs based on a comprehensive database. Similarly, the shortcomings in existing NFGM methods have been analyzed by evaluating a couple of criteria for the suitability of the synthesizing method. Two adjustment strategies have been developed to attain consistency in the response spectrum. The spectral characteristics can be maintained during the spectrum adjustment process to overcome limitations of existing methods. Synthesized specimen of NFGMs has been utilized to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.