New PEER Report 2016/05: “Ground-Motion Prediction Equations for Arias Intensity Consistent with the NGA-West2 Ground-Motion Models”

PEER has just published Report No. 2016/05 titled “Ground-Motion Prediction Equations for Arias Intensity Consistent with the NGA-West2 Ground-Motion Models.” It was authored by Charlotte Abrahamson, Hao-Jun Michael Shi, and Brian Yang.

Visit the PEER publications page to download a free color pdf of the document.

Abstract

Following the approach outlined in the Watson-Lamprey and Abrahamson [2006] conditional model for Arias intensity, we use the NGA-West2 database to derive a new scaling model for Arias intensity given peak ground acceleration (PGA), T = 1 sec spectral acceleration (SAT1), shear-wave velocity in the top 30 m (VS30), and magnitude. By combining this conditional model with each of five NGA-West2 ground-motion models for PGA and SAT1, we derived five new ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for the median and standard deviation of Arias intensity. These five GMPEs for Arias intensity capture the more complex ground-motion scaling effects found in some of the NGA-West2 GMPEs, such as hanging-wall effects, sediment-depth effects, soil nonlinearity effects, and regionalization effects. This allows for Arias intensity values to be estimated that are consistent with the NGA-West2 GMPEs.