Recent ground-motion observations suggest that surface-rupturing earthquakes generate weaker near-fault ground motion than buried earthquakes. This difference is significant in the period range of 0.3-3 sec. Contributing factors to this phenomenon may include the effect of fault zone weakness at shallow depth on rupture dynamics and rupture directivity during earthquakes.We present results from numerical experiments of spontaneous dynamic rupture and near-source ground-motion simulations of surface rupturing and buried earthquakes and discuss mechanisms for the observed ground-motion differences. The surface-rupturing earthquake is modeled with a shallow zone of 5 km thickness containing areas of negative stress drop (within the framework of the slip-weakening friction model) and lower rigidity. Surface-rupturing models with this weak zone generate lower amplitude ground velocity than do models without this modification.Observed ground-motion differences between surface and buried events are qualitatively reproduced by imposing higher stress drop in the buried earthquakes than in the surface earthquakes, combined with introducing a deeper rupture initiation for buried rupture, enhancing upward rupture-directivity effects for the latter events. In the context of our simplified model parameterization, then, the observed differences in ground motion could arise from combined effects of relative weakness of the shallow layer of faults, the relatively larger stress drops of buried ruptures, and a tendency of near-fault sites to record strong upward directivity from buried ruptures.
We proposed a new procedure for evaluating the parameters of the asperity models for predicting strong ground motions from inland earthquakes caused by long strike-slip faults. The evaluation formula of averaged dynamic stress drops obtained by Irie et al. (2010) 1) for surface ruptured faults 15 to 100 km long was adopted in our procedure, because the evaluation formula of the averaged static stress drops for circular cracks, commonly adopted in existing procedures, could not be applied to surface ruptured faults or long faults. The dynamic stress drop averaged on the entire fault was estimated to be 34 bars from the data of the rupture areas and the seismic moments of actual earthquakes, and the dynamic stress drop on the asperity was estimated to be 122 bars from the data of the short-period levels and the seismic moments of actual earthquakes. These results led to the conclusions that the asperity areas were 23 % of the entire ruptured areas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.