Practical coherency model suitable for near- and far-field earthquakes based on the effect of source-to-site distance on spatial variations in ground motions

Abstract

In this study, the spatial variation mechanisms of large far-field earthquakes at engineering scales are first investigated with data from the 2008 Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake. And a novel ‘coherency cut-off frequency’ is proposed to distinguish the spatial variations in ground motions in the low-frequency and high-frequency ranges. Then, a practical piecewise coherency model is developed to estimate and characterize the spatial variation in earthquake ground motions, including the effects of source-to-site distances, site conditions and neighboring topography on these variations. Four particular earthquake records from dense seismograph arrays are used to investigate values of the coherency cut-off frequency for different source-to-site distances. On the basis of this analysis, the model is established to simulate the spatial variations, whose parameters are suitable for both near- and far-field earthquake conditions. Simulations are conducted to validate the proposed model and method. The results show that compared to the existing models, the proposed model provides an effective method for simulating the spatial correlations of ground motions at local sites with known source-to-site distances.