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Ground motion simulations for the 23 October 2011 Van, Eastern Turkey earthquake using stochastic finite fault approach

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Abstract

The 23 October 2011 Van (Mw 7.1) earthquake that occurred in Eastern Turkey resulted in heavy damage particularly in the city of Van and town of Ercis. This paper presents ground motion simulations of Van earthquake by using stochastic finite fault method (EXSIM, Motazedian and Atkinson in Bull Seismol Soc Am 95:995–1010, 2005; Boore in Bull Seismol Soc Am 99:3202–3216, 2009) that provides a simple and effective tool to generate high frequency strong motion. The input parameters related to source, path, and site effects are calibrated on the basis of minimizing the error functions between simulations and observations both in time and frequency domain. Validated model parameters are used to produce synthetics in regional extent with the aim of understanding the level and distribution of the ground shaking particularly in the near fault region where no recordings are available within the 40 km of the epicenter. This paper evaluates the effect of two different slip models on ground motion intensity measures over the area of interest and addresses the variability in the near fault region associated with the source effect. The synthetics are compared with the corresponding estimations of ground motion prediction equations by Boore and Atkinson (Earthq Spectra 24:99–138, 2008), Akkar and Bommer (Seismol Res Lett 81:195–206, 2010) and Akkar and Cagnan (Bull Seismol Soc Am 100:2978–2995, 2010). Our results indicate that despite the limitation of the method for incorporating the directivity effect and inadequate representation of the soil conditions at the individual stations, a satisfactory match between synthetics and observations are obtained both in time and frequency domain. Spatial distributions of the synthetics in regional level also show reasonable correlation with ground motion prediction equations and damage observations.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Prof.Dr.Ali Pınar of Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI) for his help to generate figures using Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) software.

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  1. Department of Earthquake Engineering, Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, Bogazici University, 34684 , Istanbul, Turkey

    Esra Zengin & Eser Cakti

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  1. Esra Zengin
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Correspondence to Esra Zengin.

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Zengin, E., Cakti, E. Ground motion simulations for the 23 October 2011 Van, Eastern Turkey earthquake using stochastic finite fault approach. Bull Earthquake Eng 12, 627–646 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-013-9527-3

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