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Published July 2018 | public
Journal Article

A Generic Velocity Profile for Basin Sediments in California Conditioned on V_(S30)

Abstract

The near‐surface soil layers of sedimentary basins play a critical role in modifying the amplitude, frequency, and duration of earthquake ground shaking and, thus, are an important factor to consider in ground‐motion simulations, the development of site amplification factors, and earthquake hazard evaluations on a regional scale. In this article, we present a sediment velocity model (SVM) that translates V_(S30) and a proxy that describes the stiffness of the near‐surface sediments into a 1D velocity profile suitable for use in wave‐propagation‐based ground‐motion predictions. We develop the SVM based on the statistics of 914 measured velocity profiles. We conduct a validation study and show that the SVM can satisfactorily predict both 1D shear‐wave velocity profiles and linear site amplification factors. Lastly, we propose two correlations that enable the stochastic realization of the SVM profiles.

Additional Information

© 2018 Seismological Society of America. Published Online 23 May 2018. Data and resources: The shear‐wave velocity measurements used in this study come from four different sources. Two of them, Boore (2003) and Yong et al. (2013), are publicly accessible, one is collected by Chris J. Wills from the California Geological Survey (not published, but available on request), and the last one is proprietary (owned by LeRoy Crandall and Associates). The Community Velocity Model (CVM) used in this study is open‐source software, which can be accessed through https://scec.usc.edu/scecpedia/UCVM (last accessed April 2018). MATLAB is available at https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab.html (last accessed April 2018). This research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) (CFDA Number 15.807, DUNS Number 009584210) and Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC; Contribution Number 7287). SCEC is funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) Cooperative Agreement EAR‐1033462 and USGS Cooperative Agreement G12AC20038. We would like to thank Chris J. Wills and Alan Yong for their help in our data collection, and Philip J. Maechling and Ricardo Taborda for the information they provided that helped us use the SCEC Community Velocity Models. We also would like to thank Eric Thompson, Oliver Boyd, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments and suggestions in their reviews.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023