Stochastic Green’s Function Method Considering Non-Uniform Rise Time Distribution to Simulate 3D Broadband Ground Motion

Abstract

The stochastic Green’s function method has been widely used in the field of ground motion simulation in recent years. It is generally assumed that the rise time of each subfault is the same in this method. Since the rise time significantly influences the amplitude of simulation results in the intermediate frequency band, to improve the accuracy of stochastic Green’s function method for near-fault broadband ground motion simulation, referring to the numerical simulation results of Day, the rise time is assumed to be non-uniformly distributed on the fault, and an improved approximate expression of rise time on a rectangular fault considering that the rupture starting point may be at any position and the aspect ratio may be arbitrary is proposed. Additionally, the contributions of P, SV and SH wave are considered, respectively, and an improved stochastic Green’s function method is proposed for 3D broadband ground motion simulation. Taking the 1994 Northridge earthquake in America and 2013 Lushan earthquake in China as examples, under different subfault division numbers, the synthesized source spectra are compared with the omega-squared theoretical source spectra of the large earthquake, and the simulated ground motions at observation points are compared with observed records to verify the effectiveness of the improved method. The results show that when the Northridge earthquake fault and Lushan earthquake fault are divided into 9 × 10 subfaults and 11 × 7 subfaults, respectively, the simulation results obtained using the improved method are close to the observed records in the broadband frequency range. Therefore, the improved method can effectively simulate the 3D ground motion in near-fault regions.