• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.29-44
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• 2018

A ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE) for the Korean Peninsula, especially for South Korea, is developed based on synthetic ground motions generated using a ground motion model derived from instrumental records from 11 recent earthquakes of $M_L$>4.5 in Korea, including the Gyeongju earthquake of Sept. 12. 2016 ($M_L$5.8). PSAs of one standard deviation from the developed GMPE with $M_W$ 6.5 at hypocentral distances of 15 km and 25 km are compared to the design spectrum (soil condition, $S_B$) of the Korean Building Code 2016 (KBC), indicating that: (1) PSAs at short periods around 0.2 sec can be 1.5 times larger than the corresponding KBC PSA, and (2) SD's at periods longer than 2 sec do not exceed 8 cm. Although this comparison of the design spectrum with those of the GMPE developed herein intends to identify the characteristics of the scenario earthquake in a lower-seismicity region such as South Korea, it does not mean that the current design spectrum should be modified accordingly. To develop a design spectrum compatible with the Korean Peninsula, more systematic research using probabilistic seismic hazard analysis is necessary in the future.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.77-86
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• 2018

This study develops an empirical prediction equation of spectral acceleration responses of earthquakes which can induce structural damages. Ground motion records representing hazards of low-to-moderate seismic regions were selected and organized with several influential factors affecting the response spectra. The empirical equation and estimator coefficients for acceleration response spectra were then proposed using a robust nonlinear optimization coupled with a regression analysis. For analytical verification of the prediction equation, response spectra used for low-to-moderate seismic regions were estimated and the predicted results were comparatively evaluated with measured response spectra. As a result, the predicted shapes of response spectra can simulate the graphical shapes of measured data with high accuracy and most of predicted results are distributed inside range of correlation of variation (COV) of 30% from perfectly correlated lines.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2020

The stochastic point-source model has been widely used in generating artificial ground motions, which can be used to develop a ground motion prediction equation and to evaluate the seismic risk of structures. This model mainly consists of three different functions representing source, path, and site effects. The path effect is used to emulate decay in ground motion in accordance with distance from the source. In the stochastic point-source model, the path attenuation effect is taken into account by using the geometrical attenuation effect and the inelastic attenuation effect. The aim of this study is to develop accurate equations of ground motion attenuation in the Korean peninsula. In this study, attenuation was estimated and validated by using a stochastic point source model and observed ground motion recordings for the Korean peninsula.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.111-118
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• 2023

The 2017 Pohang earthquake afflicted more significant economic losses than the 2016 Gyeongju earthquake, even if these earthquakes had a similar moment magnitude. This phenomenon could be due to local site conditions that amplify ground motions. Local site effects could be estimated from methods using the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio, standard spectral ratio, and the generalized inversion technique. Since the generalized inversion method could estimate the site effect effectively, this study modeled the site effects in the Korean peninsula using the generalized inversion technique and the Fourier amplitude spectrum of ground motions. To validate the method, the site effects estimated for seismic stations were tested using recorded ground motions, and a ground motion prediction equation was developed without considering site effects.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.141-161
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• 2014

This article presents a new generation of empirical ground motion models for the prediction of response spectral accelerations in soil conditions, specifically developed for the Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic source. The strong ground motion database from which the ground motion prediction model is derived consists of over 800 horizontal components of acceleration recorded from nine Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic events as well as from other seventeen intermediate-depth earthquakes produced in other seismically active regions in the world. Among the main features of the new ground motion model are the prediction of spectral ordinates values (besides the prediction of the peak ground acceleration), the extension of the magnitudes range applicability, the use of consistent metrics (epicentral distance) for this type of seismic source, the extension of the distance range applicability to 300 km, the partition of total standard deviation in intra- and inter-event standard deviations and the use of a national strong ground motion database more than two times larger than in the previous studies. The results suggest that this model is an improvement of the previous generation of ground motion prediction models and can be properly employed in the analysis of the seismic hazard of Romania.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.389-408
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• 2016

Recently, seismic hazard analysis has become a very significant issue. New systems and available data have been also developed that could help scientists to explain the earthquakes phenomena and its physics. Scientists have begun to accept the role of uncertainty in earthquake issues and seismic hazard analysis. However, handling the existing uncertainty is still an important problem and lack of data causes difficulties in precisely quantifying uncertainty. Ground Motion Prediction Equation (GMPE) values are usually obtained in a statistical method: regression analysis. Each of these GMPEs uses the preliminary data of the selected earthquake. In this paper, a new fuzzy method was proposed to select suitable GMPE at every intensity (earthquake magnitude) and distance (site distance to fault) according to preliminary data aggregation in their area using ${\alpha}$ cut. The results showed that the use of this method as a GMPE could make a significant difference in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) results instead of selecting one equation or using logic tree. Also, a practical example of this new method was described in Iran as one of the world's earthquake-prone areas.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.59-69
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• 2021

Historical records of earthquakes are generally used as a basis to extrapolate the instrumental earthquake catalog in time and space during the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). However, the historical catalogs' input parameters determined through historical descriptions rather than any quantitative measurements are accompanied by considerable uncertainty in PSHA. Therefore, quantitative assessment to verify the historical earthquake parameters is essential for refining the reliability of PSHA. This study presents an approach and its application to constrain reliable ranges of the magnitude and corresponding epicenter of historical earthquakes. First, ranges rather than specific values of ground motion intensities are estimated at multiple locations with distances between each other for selected historical earthquakes by reviewing observed co-seismic natural phenomena, structural damage levels, or felt areas described in their historical records. Based on specific objective criteria, this study selects only one earthquake (July 24, 1643), which is potentially one of the largest historical earthquakes. Then, ground motion simulations are performed for sufficiently broadly distributed epicenters, with a regular grid to prevent one from relying on strong assumptions. Calculated peak ground accelerations and velocities in areas with the historical descriptions on corresponding earthquakes are converted to intensities with an empirical ground motion-intensity conversion equation to compare them with historical descriptions. For the ground motion simulation, ground motion prediction equations and a frequency-wavenumber method are used to consider the effects of possible source mechanisms and stress drop. From these quantitative calculations, reliable ranges of epicenters and magnitudes and the trade-off between them are inferred for the earthquake that can conservatively match the upper and lower boundaries of intensity values from historical descriptions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2014

The main focus of this paper is the analysis of the different components of the variability for strong ground motions recorded from earthquakes produced by the Vrancea subcrustal seismic source. The analysis is performed for two ground motion prediction equations: Youngs et al. (1997) and Zhao et al. (2006), recommended within the SHARE project for the Vrancea subcrustal seismic source and which are proposed in the work of Delavaud et al. (2012) and graded best in Vacareanu et al. (2013c). The first phase of the analysis procedure consists of a grading procedure. In the second phase, the single station sigma procedure is applied for both attenuation models in order to reduce some parts of ground motion models' variability produced by the ergodic assumption. The strong ground motion database which is used throughout the study consists of over 400 accelerograms recorded from 9 Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic events. The results of the single station sigma analysis show significant reduction of the standard deviations, especially in the case of the Youngs et al. (1997) attenuation model, which is also graded better than the other selected GMPE.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.277-283
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• 2020

In order to improve the ground-motion prediction equation, which is an important factor in seismic hazard assessment, it is essential to obtain good quality seismic data for a region. The Korean Peninsula has an environment in which it is difficult to obtain strong ground motion data. However, because digital seismic observation networks have become denser since the mid-2000s and moderate earthquake events such as the Odaesan earthquake (Jan. 20, 2007, M_L 4.8), the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake (Sep. 12, 2016, M_L 5.8), and the Pohang earthquake (Nov. 15, 2017, M_L 5.4) have occurred, some good empirical data on ground motion could have been accumulated. In this study, we tried to build a ground motion database that can be used for the development of the ground motion attenuation equation by collecting seismic data accumulated since the 2000s. The database was constructed in the form of a flat file with RotD50 peak ground acceleration, 5% damped pseudo-spectral acceleration, and meta information related to hypocenter, path, site, and data processing. The seismic data used were the velocity and accelerogram data for events over M_L 3.0 observed between 2003 and 2019 by the Korean National Seismic Network administered by the Korea Meteorological Administration. The final flat file contains 10,795 ground motion data items for 141 events. Although this study focuses mainly on organizing earthquake ground-motion waveforms and their data processing, it is thought that the study will contribute to reducing uncertainty in evaluating seismic hazard in the Korean Peninsula if detailed information about epicenters and stations is supplemented in the future.

• Magazine of the Korea Institute for Structural Maintenance and Inspection
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.39-44
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• 2016