Strong ground motion attenuation in Aswan area, Egypt

Abstract

Recent and paleo seismicity indicate that moder- ate seismic activity is relatively large for Aswan area. This is a warning on the possibility of occurrence of earthquakes in the future too. No strong motion records are available in Aswan area for engineers to rely upon. Consequently, the seismological modeling is an alternative approach till sufficient instrumental records around Aswan become available. In the present study, we have developed new ground motion attenuation relationship for events spanning 4.0≤Mw≤7.0 and distance to the surface projection of the fault up to 100 km for Aswan based on a statistically simulated seismological model. We generated suites of ground motion time histories using stochastic technique. The ground motion attenuation relation describes the dependence of the strength of the ground motions on the earthquake magnitude and distance from the earthquake. The proposed equation for peak ground acceleration (PGA) for the bed rock is in the form of: log PGA=gal ðÞ ¼ 1:24 þ 0:358 Mwlog R ðÞ �0:008R þ 0:22P.W here PGA is the peak ground acceleration in gal (cm/s 2 ); Mw, its moment magnitude; R is the closest distance between the rupture projection and the site of interest; and the factor P is a dummy variable. It is observed that attenuation of strong motion in Aswan is correlated with those used before in Egypt.