Seismic ground response under wavelet-based decomposed earthquake records

Abstract

In this study, strong ground motion records were decomposed by wavelet transform using denoising and downsampling methods. To evaluate the changes in the frequency content of earthquake records during wavelet-based decomposition process, the vmax/amax values of the main and decomposed records were compared. According to the results, decomposition gives reasonable outcomes up to the third level. The accuracy of the earthquake decomposition methods was examined by analyzing seismic responses of a real site. The site response under main earthquake records and wavelet-based records at different decomposition levels was determined using DEEPSOIL program and compared with the real response of the site. The results illustrate an acceptable agreement between the ground response under wavelet-based records and the site response under the main earthquake record. The results of seismic ground response indicate that denoising-based decomposed records offered a better performance in dynamic analysis compared to the downsampling-based decomposed records.