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Strong ground motion simulation of the 2003 Bam, Iran, earthquake using the empirical Green’s function method

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Abstract

The 2003 Bam, Iran, earthquake caused catastrophic damage to the city of Bam and neighboring villages. Given its magnitude (M w ) of 6.5, the damage was remarkably large. Large-amplitude ground motions were recorded at the Bam accelerograph station in the center of Bam city by the Building and Housing Research Center (BHRC) of Iran. We simulated the Bam earthquake acceleration records at three BHRC strong-motion stations—Bam, Abaraq, and Mohammad-Abad—by the empirical Green’s function method. Three aftershocks were used as empirical Green’s functions. The frequency range of the empirical Green’s function simulations was 0.5–10 Hz. The size of the strong motion generation area of the mainshock was estimated to be 11 km in length by 7 km in width. To estimate the parameters of the strong motion generation area, we used 1D and 2D velocity structures across the fault and a combined source model. The empirical Green’s function method using a combination of aftershocks produced a source model that reproduced ground motions with the best fit to the observed waveforms. This may be attributed to the existence of two distinct rupture mechanisms in the strong motion generation area. We found that the rupture starting point for which the simulated waveforms best fit the observed ones was near the center of the strong motion generation area, which reproduced near-source ground motions in a broadband frequency range. The estimated strong motion generation area could explain the observed damaging ground motion at the Bam station. This suggests that estimating the source characteristics of the Bam earthquake is very important in understanding the causes of the earthquake damage.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the Editor in Chief T. Dahm and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that improved the manuscript. We are grateful to the Building and Housing Research Center, Iran, for providing the strong motion data. We sincerely thank Kazuki Koketsu, Sadaomi Suzuki, Hiroshi Takenaka, Takeshi Nakamura, Natalia Poiata, John G. Anderson, and S. Keivan Hosseini for their fruitful discussions and comments. Some figures were made using the Generic Mapping Tools software (Wessel and Smith 1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earthquake Research Center, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, 9177948974, Iran

    Hossein Sadeghi & Ali Riahi

  2. Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Hiroe Miyake

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  1. Hossein Sadeghi
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  2. Hiroe Miyake
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  3. Ali Riahi
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Correspondence to Hossein Sadeghi.

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Sadeghi, H., Miyake, H. & Riahi, A. Strong ground motion simulation of the 2003 Bam, Iran, earthquake using the empirical Green’s function method. J Seismol 17, 297–312 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-012-9317-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-012-9317-4

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