Simulation of Near-Fault Strong Ground Motion in the Beijing Region

On the basis of previous study of the 1679 Sanhe-Pinggu(M8.0) earthquake,the biggest event in history ever recorded in Beijing and its adjacent area,we made a 3-D strong ground motion simulation utilizing the staggered-grid finite differences method to study the distributions of peak ground velocity with different earthquake source models in the Beijing region.In the paper,earthquake source models and a transmission medium velocity model are established and the corresponding parameters are given in accordance to the results from a related previous study.Then,using a three-dimensional finite difference computing program of near-fault strong ground motion developed by Graves,the peak ground velocity caused by a destructive earthquake in the Beijing area is simulated.In our computation model,the earthquake source is 3km in depth,and a total number of 21,679 observation points on the ground surface are figured out.The transmission medium velocity model is composed of four stratums which are the Quaternary deposit,the upper crust,the upper part of the middle crust and the lower part of the middle crust.With the minimum grid spacing of 0.15km,a total of 2.28×106 grids are generated.Using a time step of 0.02 seconds we calculated the peak ground velocity for a duration of 8 seconds.After the analysis of the simulation results,we observed some basic characteristics of near-fault strong ground motion such as the concentration effect of near-fault peak ground velocity,rupture directivity effect,hanging wall effect,and basin effect.The results from our simulation and analysis suggest that the source and transmitting medium parameters in our model are suitable and the finite difference method is applicable to estimate the distribution of strong ground motion in the study region.