RES2016-24: Tennessee Department of Transportation Research Development and Technology Program

Central and eastern North America (CENA) is considered to be a moderately active region, but it suffers from a lack of recorded earthquakes in the magnitude-distance range of engineering interest. In this report, region-specific synthetic strong ground motion time histories are generated using a new and improved stochastic summation of Green's functions method (SSGFM) for CENA. In addition, the synthetics are used to develop ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for this region. For simulating large earthquakes, considering the effects of finite-fault rupture such as rupture propagation, asperities, and fault-site geometry (saturation effect) are significant and influential. The SSGFM is a straightforward approach in which the effect of rupture propagation is stochastically considered by summation over many lagged small earthquakes, without requiring any detailed information about the rupture process such as rise time, slip distribution, rupture speed, and dimensions of the fault. The summation procedure is defined to match the spectrum of the target event satisfying the scaling law of the source spectra. The effect of asperities on waveforms is brought into play by using a two-stage summation scheme through simulations. Since the concept of the source in the SSGFM developed in this report is point source, the distance defined in its framework is the distance between the site and an equivalent point source, called effective distance, in which the impact of the propagation path on seismic waves radiated from different parts of the fault is considered. However, motions come from different parts of the fault rupture in the extended source model, not a single point. This research will improve the SSGFM to convert the effective distance to the Joyner-Boore distance, which is one the most-used distance metrics in the engineering and seismology fields, for a given fault size within a region with given geometrical spreading and attenuation functions. Further, this research will improve the summation scheme of the SSGFM to define the source spectrum of large earthquakes with double-corner frequency models.

• Record URL:
  https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tdot/long-range-planning/research/final-reports/RES2016-24%20Final%20Report_approved.pdf
• 
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Final Report title: A New Spectrum Matching-Response Spectrum in Central United States.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $142851
• Contract Numbers:

  RES2016-24

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Tennessee Department of Transportation

  James K. Polk Building
  Fifth and Deaderick Street
  Nashville, TN  United States  37243-0349
• Managing Organizations:

  Tennessee Department of Transportation

  James K. Polk Building
  Fifth and Deaderick Street
  Nashville, TN  United States  37243-0349
• Performing Organizations:

  University of Memphis

  Center for Intermodal Freight Transportation Studies
  3815 Central Avenue
  Memphis, TN  United States  38152
• Principal Investigators:

  Pezeshk, Shahram

• Start Date: 20151112
• Expected Completion Date: 20190227
• Actual Completion Date: 20190227
• USDOT Program: Transportation, Planning, Research, and Development

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Earthquakes; Forecasting; Seismicity; Simulation
• Geographic Terms: Tennessee
• Subject Areas: Geotechnology; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01764378
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Tennessee Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: RES2016-24
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Feb 4 2021 2:21PM