Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published July 2005 | public
Journal Article

Simulating strong ground motion from complex sources by reciprocal Green functions

Abstract

We have developed a method to calculate site and path effects for complex heterogeneous media using synthetic Green's functions. The Green's functions are calculated numerically by imposing body forces at the site of interest and then storing the reciprocal Green's functions along arbitrary finite-fault surfaces. By using reciprocal Green's functions, we can then simulate many source scenarios for those faults because the primary numerical calculations need be done only once. The advantage of the proposed method is shown by evaluation of the site and path effects for three sites in the vicinity of the Los Angeles basin using the Southern California Velocity Model (version 2.2, Magistrale et al., 2000). In this example, we have simulated 300 source scenarios for 5 major southern California faults and compared their responses for period longer then 3 seconds at the selected sites. However, a more detailed comparison with strong motion records will be necessary before a particular hazard assessment can be made. For the tested source scenarios the results show that the variations in the peak velocity amplitudes and durations due to a source scenarios are as large as variations due to a heterogeneous velocity model.

Additional Information

© 2005 StudiaGeo s.r.o., Prague. Received: April 22, 2003; Revised: January 15, 2005; Accepted: April 19, 2005. The authors would like to thank Hiroo Kanamori, Tom Heaton, Ned Field, Jiří Zahradník and three anonymous reviewers and the associate editor for their valuable suggestions and discussion during the study. Many of the figures were made with GMT (Wessel and Smith, 1991). This research was supported by the Southern California Earthquake Center. SCEC is funded by NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR-8920136 and USGS Cooperative Agreements 14-08-0001-A0899 and 1434-HQ-97AG01718. The SCEC contribution number for this paper is 558. Contribution number 8821 from the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 19, 2023