Empirical Equations for the Prediction of the Significant, Bracketed, and Uniform Duration of Earthquake Ground Motion

The complete characterization of earthquake ground motion includes the length of the interval of strong shaking as well as the amplitude and frequency content of the time series. There are relatively few published equations available for the prediction of strong-motion duration from earthquakes, which may in part be a consequence of the fact that the duration of shaking has generally not been considered in structural engineering. Recognizing that there are many applications for which an estimate of the duration of ground motion is needed, this study presents new empirical predictive equations for a number of definitions of strong-motion duration using the records from the Next Generation of Attenuation (NGA) global database of accelerograms from shallow crustal earthquakes. The equations can be used to estimate ground-motion durations from shallow crustal earthquakes of magnitude between M(w) 4.8 and 7.9 at distances up to 100 km from the source.