Friday paper reading

6th , July 2023

Microtremor HVSR analysis of heterogeneous shallow sedimentary

structures

at Pohang, South Korea

Su Young Kang, Kwang-Hee Kim*, Jer-Ming Chiu and Lanbo Liu

Pusan National University, University of Memphis, University of Connecticut
Why HVSR ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_site_effects

Site effects play a very important role in characterizing seismic ground motions because they may strongly amplify.

On 19 September 1985 (Ms 8.1) earthquake, Mexico City suffered more than 10,000 casualties and approximately
(US$ 6 billion) in damage to the downtown area, which is located on ancient lake sediments.

Severe ground motion amplification at sites with thick layers of soft soil.

The horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) analysis of ambient vibrations is an approved tool for site
characterizations (site classes).
HVSR technique ?
• The technique estimates the ratio between the Fourier amplitude spectra
of the horizontal and vertical components of the ambient noise vibrations
recorded at a single station.

• The HVSR method yields a clear peak at the resonance frequency in the
soft soil layers.

• Two advantages of the HVSR analysis are its simplicity and low-cost
implementation. The technique is even applicable in low-seismicity areas
in addition to seismic hazard and risk assessments.

• (Nakamura method) Nakamura, Y. (1989) A method for dynamic

characteristics estimation of subsurface using microtremor on the ground
surface.
 (Kim et al. 2020).

• A ML 5.4 (MW 5.5) earthquake occurred in the city of Pohang, southeastern Korea, on 15 November 2017.
• The earthquake was felt up to 270 km from the source area, in Seoul. Powerful shaking, as strong as MMI VIII
(KMA, 2018), continued until February 2018 in the source area.
• They applied the HVSR technique to 124 temporary seismic stations in the epicentral area of the 2017 MW 5.4
Pohang earthquake.
 • total of 124 seismic stations were selected for the single-station microtremor HVSR analysis.
Geopsy • One-hour-long waveform data

(opensource software) • sample rate, 200 samples per second at each station.
• Buried 0.5m below the surface to reduce the contributions from surface effects, including wind.

A single clear peak Multiple peaks no peaks (flat response)

1. a single clear peak were directly related to the depth of a sharp velocity increase or soil deposit
thickness.
2. Multiple HVSR peaks indicated the presence of complex subsurface structures. (different
depths and lateral subsurface heterogeneities may lead to multiple peaks)
3. A broad or no HVSR peak was also quite common (the stations located on hard-rock (bedrock)
https://www.geopsy.org
sites)
 Site classification map
• Thirty-six sites yielded HVSR curves with a single clear peak.
• Eighty-eight sites yielded HVSR curves with multiple peaks.
• The fundamental frequencies of the HVSR curves range from 0.35 to
19.86 Hz.
• Low resonance frequencies (<1.0 Hz) are observed mainly in the central
part of the study area, with the lowest resonance frequencies (<0.5 Hz)
being clustered in the central-southern part of the study area.

The relationship between the thickness of the sedimentary layer (Z) and

resonance frequency (Fr). (Lachet & Bard 1994; Ibs-von Seht &

Wohlenberg 1999; Lee et al. 2017):

 Sedimentary Thickness map

• the average shear-wave velocity (480 m s−1; Geological Society of Korea

2019) that was applied to convert the resonance frequency to the
sedimentary layer thickness below each station.
• A thick sedimentary layer is observed in the central and central-southern
parts of the study area (yellow and red areas)
• the resultant sediment thickness ranging from 6 to 340 m.
• The sedimentary layer thickness is thin (bed rock) in the northern part of
the study area, and thick in the central and southern parts.
• The present results indicate that the thickest sediments are located in the
south-central part of the study area.
 Borehole vs HVSR results

• TB1, which is located in the centre of the research area, are in close agreement with those estimated in this study.
• sedimentary layer thicknesses at the three boreholes near the EGS site (TB1, BH3 and BH4) are similar to the those estimated in this
study.
• The sedimentary layer thicknesses at the borehole sites located in the southern and eastern parts of the study area measured by Song et
al. (2015), are slightly different from the results in this study.
• We modified the uppermost 1 km of both the Kim2011 and GSK2019 models to include the laterally varying shallow sedimentary
structure outlined by the HVSR analysis in this study.
• We assumed that the sediments possessed an average P-wave velocity of 1.67 km/s, with their thickness varying from 0 to 340 m.