DEP-501E

ENGINEERING SEISMOLOGY

Strong Ground Motion - I

Assoc.Prof.Dr. Beyza TAŞKIN
www.akademi.itu.edu.tr/btaskin btaskin@itu.edu.tr

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
 What does STRONG MOTION mean?
When the motion due to an earthquake reaches the level where humans
can feel it (typically a 1~2% g), it is often called strong motion. This is
actually an arbitrary level, meant to communicate the level qualitatively,
as when one says “heavy rain” versus “light rain”.

 What is an accelerometer? What is an accelerograph? What is

an accelerogram?
An accelerometer is a sensor that measures acceleration, like a
speedometer measures speed. An accelerometer is often part of an
accelerograph, which is an instrument that contains accelerometers and
records the acceleration of the ground motion. The acceleration record is
called an accelerogram.

Accelerometer Accelerograph Accelerogram

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 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
 Where do we use the strong motion data?
Strong motion data are used for:
 Earthquake emergency response;
 Engineering (design & evaluation) and Scientific Research.

 What are the products of strong-motion data?

For earthquake emergency response, applications such

as ‘ShakeMaps’ use strong-motion data as the input
and generate near-real time information on the levels of
ground shaking and loss assessment for emergency
responders.

Research products in engineering

and scientific applications include
evaluation of structural
performance, near surface wave
propagation and attenuation, local
site characterization, and strong
motion prediction, etc.

STRONG GROUND MOTION

For Engineering purposes: Ground Motion Intensity Measures are very useful
tools; involving:
 PGA; PGV
 Response Spectra (elastic or inelastic)
 Engineering Intensities (i.e. Arias intensity; Fourier Amplitude Spectrum; Duration;
Housner Intensity; etc.)
 Time Series

Ground Motion Intensity Measures can be classified into 3 groups:

1) Amplitude parameters
2) Frequency content parameters
3) Strong ground motion duration parameters

Depending on which measure is considered, it might either describe a single

characteristic feature of a ground motion or two or more features at the same
time.

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 STRONG GROUND MOTION
Time Series is the most common source to describe an earthquake-induced
ground motion.

PGA Acceleration: shows a significant proportion of

relatively high frequencies (low periods).
The maximum value is Peak Ground Acceleration-PGA
 dt Velocity: shows substantially less high-frequency
motion than the acceleration.
PGV Peak Ground Velocity-PGV

 dt Displacement: dominated by relatively low frequency

motion (high period).
PGD Peak Ground Displacement-PGD

STRONG GROUND MOTION

PGA: Peak Ground Acceleration

► Easy to measure because the response of most instruments is
proportional to ground acceleration,
► Convenient single number to enable rough evaluation of importance of
records,
► Liked by many engineers because it can be related to the force on a short-
period building,
► BUT it is not a measure of the force on most buildings,
► It is controlled by the high frequency (short-period) content in the ground
motion (i.e., it is not associated with a narrow range of frequencies); records
can show isolated short-duration, high-amplitude spikes with little
engineering significance.

see: David Boore

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 STRONG GROUND MOTION

PGV: Peak Ground Velocity

► Many think it is better correlated with damage than other measures.
► It is sensitive to longer periods than PGA (making it potentially more
predictable by using deterministic models).
► BUT it requires digital processing.

 a(t )dt
see: David Boore

STRONG GROUND MOTION

PGD: Peak Ground Displacement

► The best parameter for displacement-based design.
► BUT highly sensitive to the high-pass (HP) filter that needs to be applied to
most records (in which case the derived PGD might not represent the true
PGD, unlike PGA, for which the Earth imposes a natural limit to the
frequency content).

 a(t )dt
2

see: David Boore

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 USING ACCELEROGRAMS
There are world-wide earthquake acceleration record providers for
research purposes:
 Department of Earthquake / Ministry of Interior-Disaster &
Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD)
https://deprem.afad.gov.tr
 Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER)
https://peer.berkeley.edu
 European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC)
https://www.emsc-csem.org
 Consortium of Organizations for Strong Motion Observation
Systems (COSMOS)
https://www.cosmos-eq.org
 Japan National Research Institute for Earth Science & Disaster
Prevention (NIED) / Strong Motion Seismograph Networks (K-NET
and KiK-net)
https://www.kyoshin.bosai.go.jp/
 Other sources can be searched via internet...

USING ACCELEROGRAMS

NSMN-Turkey has 8500 stations in homeland and 13 more in TRNC

ANSS-USA: Advanced National Seismic System will establish nationwide network of over
7000 earthquake sensor systems. ~2500 currently

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 USING ACCELEROGRAMS

An example of an
earthquake record
provided by AFAD-
Turkey

An example of an
earthquake record
provided by PEER-
USA

USING ACCELEROGRAMS

Characterization of ground motions as well as seismic demands have

been developed primarily from recordings obtained from strong-
motion accelerographs.
Databases contain acceleration-time histories; however they are
mostly ‘raw’ motions and they contain ‘noise’ which needs to be
eliminated by adequate processing.

Primary Processing Operations:

 Baseline correction
 High-pass filtering
 Low-pass filtering
 Band-pass filtering

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 USING ACCELEROGRAMS

It is important for strong-ground motion users to appreciate that

digitized accelerograms are never pure. It is necessary to optimize the
balance between acceptable signal-to-noise ratios in the accelerograms.

Analog Accelerograms:
 These instruments produce traces of the ground acceleration against time
on film or paper.
 Most widely used analog instrument is the Kinemetrics SMA-1
 Always triggered by a specified threshold of acceleration which means the
first motions are often not recorded
 The natural frequency is generally limited to ~25Hz in analog instruments
 It is necessary to digitize the traces of analog instruments as they record on
film or paper: this is the prime source of noise !

see: David Boore

USING ACCELEROGRAMS
Digital Accelerograms:
 They operate continuously and by use of pre-event memory, are able to
retain the first wave arrivals
 Depending on the transducers having natural frequencies of 50 to 100 Hz
or even higher; their dynamic range is much wider
 Analog-to-digital conversion is performed within the instrument, thus
obviating the need to digitize the records
 A problem encountered with some digitized analogue records is shifts in the
baseline, which is a result of the record being digitized in sections and not
being correctly spliced

see: David Boore

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 USING ACCELEROGRAMS
In a quick glance, there seems to be no noise problem in the raw
acceleration record to be employed during structural analysis....

USING ACCELEROGRAMS
...however, when you numerically integrate them and obtain the
velocity- and displacement-time histories, you might observe that they
appear unphysical: the ground
motion appears as a single
asymmetrical elastic displacement
pulse of more than 2m amplitude

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING
To remove the numerical errors due to numerical integration, processing of
accelerograms is necessary. However it is not exactly possible to:

Identify
Seperate
Remove
the noise in order to recover the actual seismic signal. The best that can be
achieved is to:
 Identify those portions of the frequency content of the record where the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is unacceptably low;
 Remove the contaminated frequencies from the record through processing.
Thus, we are not “correcting” the raw data but we are retrieving the most
useful information through a suitable processing.

see: Sinan Akkar

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

I- BASELINE CORRECTION:
By baseline correction process, spurious baseline trends encountered with
both analog & digital accelerograms and usually well noticeable in the
displacement time-history obtained from double time-integration of
uncorrected acceleration records, are removed from the input motion.
As a physical phenomenon, the ground velocity must return to zero at the
end of the ground shaking. However, the final displacement need not be
zero since the ground can undergo permanent deformation either through the
plastic response of near-surface materials or through the co-seismic slip on
the fault.
A strait line (y=a0) or a low-order polynomial (generally a linear function
y=a0+a1x or a quadratic one y=a0+a1x+a2x2) that best fits the time-
acceleration pairs of values is determined by regression analysis and then
subtracting from the actual acceleration values their corresponding
counterparts as obtained with the regression-derived equation is carried out.

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING
If a strait line function will be employed, then baseline correction is realized simply by
subtracting the mean value of the acceleration values from the accelerogram.

(36.858  23.616)
V1  0.01  0.302
2
(23.616  19.165)
V2  V1  0.01  0.516
2

(0.0  0.302)
D1  0.01  0.002
2
(0.302  0.516)
D2  D1  0.01  0.006
2

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

For a linear or a polynomial function:
(i) Perform regression analysis (least-squares-fit
method) and obtain the polynomial line/curve
that best fits the time-acceleration pairs of
values
(ii) Subtract from the actual acceleration values
their corresponding counterparts as obtained
with the regression-derived equation.

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING
1999 Chi-Chi Taiwan EQ / TCU074
In some cases, as in1999 Chi-Chi records, a
throughout baseline correction might not be
enough. Iwan et al (1985) proposed that two
baselines be removed:
am  between t1 and t2
af  between t2 and tf
The value am is an average of the possibly
complicated shifts in baseline that could occur
during the strong shaking. t1 is the assumed
time of zero velocity and selected as the time
that the absolute value of the acceleration first
exceeds 50cm/s2.
The level af is determined from the slope of a
line fit to a portion of the velocity trace
following the strong shaking:
vf (t) = v0 + af t

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

In application, the vf line is found by least-squares fitting of a portion of the velocity
from tf1 to tf2. It would be preferable to set tf1 to a time well after the strong shaking has
subsided.
The correction am is determined by the requirement that the final velocity, after baseline
correction, average to zero. This is satisfied if the velocity of the baseline correction at
the end of the t1-t2 interval (am (t2-t1)), equals the velocity from the fitted line vf(t2). So:
v f (t 2 )
am 
t 2  t1
Two specific options for t2:
(1) t2 is the time after which the acceleration never exceeds 50 cm/s2;
(2) t2 is chosen to minimize the final displacement

Boore chooses the t2 as the time at Corresponding

which the line fit to velocity becomes straight line for
zero and refers it as v0 correction. acceleration time
series
t2 = -v0/af

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING
II- FREQUENCY FILTERING :

General Terminology:
i. Low-Pass Filtering (aka High-Cut filtering) :
LP filtering suppresses frequencies that are higher than a user-defined cut-off
frequency f1. Removes the high-frequency (short period) components of GM.

ii. High-Pass Filtering (aka Low-Cut filtering) :

HP filtering allows frequencies that are higher than the cut-off frequency f1 to
pass through. Removes the low-frequency (long period) components of GM.

iii. Band-Pass Filtering :

BP filtering allows signals within a given frequency range (f1 to f2) bandwidth
to pass through.

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

II- FREQUENCY FILTERING (cont’d):

Filtering can be employed to remove the unwanted frequency components

from a given accelerogram.
These unwanted frequencies are known as spectral noise.
Spectral noise can be best examined by Fourier Amplitude Spectrum…

Frequency (f) = number of complete cycles of vibration per second

Period (T) = time needed to complete one full cycle of vibration (T = 1/f = 2/)

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 FOURIER SPECTRUM
Though the randomness of earthquake ground motion, it is assumed that a
strong-motion can be represented by the summation of various harmonic
vibrations having different frequencies and amplitudes.

Complex Waveform Sinusoidal Components

(earthquakes) (sinus waves with f ; )

High frequency

+

+
Low frequency

FOURIER SPECTRUM
For an earthquake record ug (t ) Fourier Transform can be written as:
 
F ()   ug (t )e it dt   ug (t )[cos t  i sin t ]dt
 

….and through inverse transform, time series (acceleration values in time domain)
can be recovered as:
1  i t
ug (t )   F ()e d
2 

During the determination of the frequency content of a ground motion with a

duration of td, one of the most preferred indicator is the Fourier Amplitude
Spectrum given below:

td td
FAS ()  (  ug () cos d) 2  (  ug () sin d) 2
0 0

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 FOURIER SPECTRUM
If we again consider the 13.03.1992 Erzincan EQ’s NS component in the baseline-
corrected form and calculate the Fourier Spectrum, we can see the noisy parts in the
low and high frequency ranges:

Low-frequency
noise

High-frequency
noise

Dominant
Frequency

High-Pass Filter Low-Pass Filter

Mostly because of Mostly man-made, or
instrumentation and tilting natural events like wind

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

To create any of the above three filtering configurations, some Infinite-

Impulse-Response (IIR) filter types are available in literature. Four well-
known filters are:

 Butterworth
 Chebyshev
 Bessel
 Ormsby

4th order Butterworth filter is commonly preferred. Many strong-motion

database providers (such as European Strong Motion Database) apply band-
pass filter with corner frequencies f1=0.10 Hz and f2=25 Hz before they are
served to users.

However, the correct application of the chosen filter is much more

important than the choice of a particular filter…

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING
The fundamental choice of filtering is between causal and acausal filters.

Acausal filters: They do not produce phase distortion in the signal.

Causal filters: They might result in phase shifts in the record.

The zero-phase shift of acausal filters is achieved in the time domain by

passing the transform of the filter along the record from start to finish and
then reversing the order and passing the filter from the end of the record to
the beginning. To achieve the zero phase shift, acausal filters have to start
acting prior to the beginning of the record. For this, they need zero pads
before and after the record.

Causal filters do not require pre-event pads to maintain compatibility

between acceleration, velocity and displacement, however they can produce
significant phase distortions which changes the waveforms of displacements.

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

During the digitizing of earthquake records, spectral noise (in Fourier

Amplitude Spectra) is introduced into the signal, mostly in low frequencies.

The components of low frequencies including acceleration, velocity and

displacement, are very important since:
 the acceleration express the seismic force per unit mass,
 velocity is related directly with the kinetic energy of seismic waves;
 displacement gives us information for the deformation of the ground.

Also low frequency seismic waves have a great contribution in the response of
tall buildings and large constructions, such as bridges and dams.

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING
Employing fc as cut-off frequency and fr is the roll-of frequency, Low or High
Pass filters can be defined as below:
H( f )  0  f  fc H( f )  0  f  fc
f  fc f  fc
H( f )   fc  f  fr H( f )   fc  f  fr
fr  fc fr  fc
H( f ) 1  f  fr H( f ) 1  f  fr

Butterworth filter with low cut-off (high-pass) frequency of fc=0.05Hz

fr

High-pass f c=0.05Hz means that periods above 20s are removed !

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

In practice compare:
1- Fourier Spectrum of the recorded components a(t)  Noise Spectrum n(t)
If you have a pre-event recording n(t), then the entire record will also contain this pre-
event noise.
a(t) = s(t) + n(t)

NOISE SIGNAL EARTHQUAKE+NOISE SIGNAL

(P-wave arrival: t=18 s)

Signal-to-Noise Ratio, SNR
EARTHQUAKE SIGNAL
 E[( s   s ) 2 ] 
SNR  10 log10  2 
 E[(n   n ) ] 
 is the mean value of the signal
NOISE SIGNAL

For more information see: Fatma Sevil Malcıoğlu (2011). Deprem İvme Kayıtlarındaki
Gürültünün Yapısal Davranışa Etkisinin İncelenmesi, M.Sc. Thesis, İTÜ Deprem
Mühendisliği ve Afet Yönetimi Enstitüsü.

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

2- Displacement-Time Trace
Visually inspect the displacement waveform to
decide whether or not it looks unphysical ?!

Effect of different high-pass corner

frequencies on displacement variation.

STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

3- Shape of Fourier Amplitude Spectrum (FAS) (look for f 2 slope)
Judgment of where the long-period portion of the record FAS deviates from the
tendency to decay in proportion to the reciprocal of the frequency squared.
The single corner-frequency model of Brune (1970) is enough for earthquake records.

See: David Boore & Julian Bommer, 2005

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 STRONG MOTION PROCESSING

By applying a band-pass filter with corner frequencies fHP=0.10Hz and fLP=25Hz to the
baseline corrected version of the Erzincan-NS component, we can obtain the following
FAS. In the same figure, FAS for the raw motion is also illustrated in red color.

When Earthquake Strikes,

Every Second Counts !

End of the Topic

Strong Ground Motion-1

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