Relation Between Near-Fault Ground Motion Impulsive Signals and Source Parameters

Abstract

Near-fault ground motion records often present impulsive signals, characterized by a largeamplitude in the velocity wavefield and by the energy concentrated in a short time window as comparedto the total earthquake duration. Thispulse-likebehavior is ascribed to the directivity of the seismic rupture,and it requires a stronger demand to the buildings not predicted by the classical design spectra. In this workwe investigate the pulse occurrence and duration in near-fault synthetic seismograms generated from anensemble ofk 2source models. We exploited the fault geometry of theMw= 6.3, 2009 L’Aquila earthquake,which represents a typical example of normal-fault earthquake for which several records in the fault vicinityare available for comparison with synthetics. We show that impulsive records are sensitive to the rupturevelocity, to the hypocenter depth, and to the station location, whether it is on the hanging wall or on thefootwall. The pulse duration was also shown to be proportional to the risetime, and it scales with thesource-receiver distance and inversely with the rupture velocity. We model these results as an effectof the coupled along-strike and updip directivity