Overview of strong-motion data from the Darfield earthquake

Abstract

The Darfield earthquake of 3rd September 2010 UT and its aftershocks have yielded New Zealand’s richest set of strong-motion data since recording began in the early 1960s. Main-shock accelerograms were returned by 130 sites, ten of which had peak horizontal accelerations in the range 0.3 to 0.82g. One near-fault record, from Greendale, had a peak vertical acceleration of 1.26g. Eighteen records showed peak ground velocities exceeding 0.5 m/s, with three of them exceeding 1 m/s. The records included some with strong long-period directivity pulses, some with other long-period components that were related to a mixture of source and site effects, and some that exhibited the effects of liquefaction at their sites. There were marked differences between records on the deep alluvium of Christchurch City and the Canterbury Plains, and those on shallow stiff soil sites. The strong-motion records provide the opportunity to assess the effects of the earthquake in terms of the ground motions and their relationship to design motions. They also provide an invaluable set of near-source motions for seismological studies. Our report presents an overview of the records and some preliminary findings derived from them.