• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.23-32
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• 2004

The local geologic and dynamic site characteristics, which include soil profiles, shear wave velocity profiles and depths to the bed rock were gathered from 148 sites all over the Korean peninsula and those values are compared to those in the western USA. Site response analyses were performed based on equivalent linear scheme using design rock-outcrop acceleration of 0.154g which corresponds to the collapse level of earthquake for seismic category I structure. The results show that the amplification factor based on Korean seismic design guideline underestimates the motion in short-period range and overestimates the motion in mid-period range. It is suggested that the existing Korean seismic guideline based on UBC is required to be modified considering dynamic site characteristics in Korea for the reliable estimation of site amplification.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.203-210
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• 2013

To look into site characteristics of the Hwacheon borehole seismic station, we analyzed property of earthquake and microtremor recorded on surface and borehole seismometers. Acoording to analysis result of microtremor, the surface-to-borehole energy ratio was approximately 15 times greater during the daytime than during the nighttime, and the surface-to-borehole ratios of spectral amplitudes as frequency increases. For earthquake data, amplitude spectra and dominant frequency were computed using surface and borehole data. As a result, small earthquakes with short distance recorded on surface seismometer peaked at 8 Hz, 46 Hz. This result corresponds to resonance frequencies (7.4 Hz, 46 Hz) calculated by H/V spectral ratio. We confirmed amplification effect by site characteristics of overburden. Background noise level was approximately 20,000 times smaller at borehole seismic station than surface seismic station. These results provide strong evidence for the superior recording of earthquakes using borehole seismometers instead of surface seismometers.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.77-86
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• 2020

In this study, the importance of implied strength correction for shallow depths at a region of moderate to low seismicity with primary focus on its effect upon site natural period and mean period of the ground motion is investigated. In addition to the most commonly used Modified Kondner-Zelasko (MKZ) model, this paper uses a quadratic/hyperbolic (GQ/H) model that can capture the stress - strain response at large strains as well as small strain stiffness dependence. A total of six site profiles by downhole tests are used and 1D site response analyses are performed using three input motions with contrasting mean periods. The difference between non-corrected and corrected analyses is conditional on the site period as well as mean ground motion period. The effect of periods is analyzed by correlating them with the effective peak ground acceleration, maximum shear strains and amplification factors. The comparative study reveals that the difference is more prominent in soft sites with long site periods. Insignificant differences are observed when soil profiles are subjected to ground motion with very short mean period.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.40-51
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• 2016

The problem has been pointed out that the domestic design response spectrum does not reflect site amplification, particularly in the high frequency bands, including the fact that site specific response spectrum from the observed ground motions appears relatively higher than design response spectrum. Among various methods, this study applied H/V spectral ratio of ground motion for estimating site amplification. This method, originated from S waves and Rayleigh waves, recently has been extended to Coda waves and background noise for estimating site amplification. For limited time of periods, 4 electric substation sites had operated seismic stations at two separate locations (bedrock and borehole) within each substation site. H/V spectral ratio of S wave, Coda wave, and background noise, was applied to 36 accelerations of 3 macro earthquakes (Odaesan, Jeju and Gongju earthquakes), larger than magnitude 3.4. observed simultaneously at each bedrock location within 4 electric substation sites. Site amplifications at the bedrock location of 4 sites were compared among S wave, Coda wave energy, and background noise, and then compared to the previous results from the borehole location data. The site classification was also tried using resonancy frequency information at each site and location. The results suggested that all the electric substation sites showed similar site amplification patterns among S wave, Coda wave, and background noise. Each station showed its own characteristics of site amplification property in low, high and specific resonance frequency ranges. Comparison of this study to other results using different method can give us much more information about dynamic amplification of domestic sites characteristics and site classification.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.36 no.7
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• pp.632-642
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• 2015

Seismograms are composed of 3 characteristics, that is, seismic source, attenuation, and site amplification. Among them, site amplification characteristics should be considered significantly to estimate seismic source and attenuation characteristics with more confidence. This purpose of this study is to estimate the site amplification characteristics at each site using horizontal to vertical (H/V) spectral ratio method. This method, originally proposed by Nakamura (1989), has been applied to study the surface waves in microtremor records. It has been recently extended to the shear wave energy of strong motion and applied to the study of site amplification. This study analyzed the H/V spectral ratio of 6 ground motions respectively using observed data from 4 sites nearby in Yedang Reservoir. And then, site amplification effects at each site, from 3 kinds of seismic energies, that is, S waves, Coda waves energy, and background noise were compared each other. The results suggested that 4 sites showed its own characteristics of site amplification property in specific resonance frequency ranges (YDS: ~11 Hz, YDU: ~4 Hz, YDD: ~7 Hz). Comparison of this study to other studies using different analysis method can give us much more information about dynamic amplification of domestic sites characteristics and site classification.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.191-202
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• 2007

To identify the detailed attenuation structure in the southern Korean Peninsula, a numerical test was conducted for the Q tomography inversion to be applied to the accumulated dataset until 2005. In particular, the stochastic pointsource ground-motion model (STGM model; Boore, 2003) was adopted for the 2D Q tomography inversion for direct application to simulating the strong ground-motion. Simultaneous inversion of the STGM model parameters with a regional single Q model was performed to evaluate the source and site effects which were necessary to generate an artificial dataset for the numerical test. The artificial dataset consists of simulated Fourier spectra that resemble the real data in the magnitude-distance-frequency-error distribution except replacement of the regional single Q model with a checkerboard type of high and low values of laterally varying Q models. The total number of Q blocks used for the checkerboard test was 75 (grid size of $35{\times}44km^2$ for Q blocks); Q functional form of $Q_0f^{\eta}$ ($Q_0$=100 or 500, 0.0 < ${\eta}$ < 1.0) was assigned to each Q block for the checkerboard test. The checkerboard test has been implemented in three steps. At the first step, the initial values of Q-values for 75 blocks were estimated. At the second step, the site amplification function was estimated by using the initial guess of A(f) which is the mean site amplification functions (Yun and Suh, 2007) for the site class. The last step is to invert the tomographic Q-values of 75 blocks based on the results of the first and second steps. As a result of the checkerboard test, it was demonstrated that Q-values could be robustly estimated by using the 2D Q tomography inversion method even in the presence of perturbed source and site effects from the true input model.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.35-43
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• 2012

Following the companion paper (I. Comparisons with Well-known Seismic Code and Site Response Characteristics), several acceleration data recorded during recent earthquake events in Korea were analyzed to verify the suitability of the proposed two-parameters site classification system and the corresponding site coefficients. For all of rock-soil site pairs less than 30 km distant, response spectrums and corresponding site coefficients, $F_a$ and $F_v$, were determined. Unfortunately, some of data have an eccentric error, where the spectral acceleration of rock site is more amplified than that of soil site. The $F_a$ and $F_v$ for all of pairs except the pairs of error were compared with those in the current code and the proposed system. The $F_a$ and $F_v$ from the recorded motions show definitely different trend from that of the current code. In addition, the site coefficients from recorded motions at four 765 kV substation sites, which are several hundred meters distant, have a remarkably similar trend and absolute values to those in proposed two-parameters site classification system. Based on earthquake motions recorded in domestic areas including data from the four 765 kV substation sites, the two-parameters site classification and site coefficients are superior to the results obtained from the current Korean seismic code.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.5-12
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• 2020

Vibration propagated from seismic sources has damping according to distance and amplification and reduction characteristic in different regions according to topography and geological structure. The vibration propagated from the seismic source to the bedrock is largely affected by the damping according to the separation distance, which can be simply estimated through the damping equation. However, it is important to grasp geological information by location because vibration estimation transmitted to the surface are affected by the natural period of the soil located above the bedrock. Geotechnical investigation data are needed to estimate the seismic intensity based on geological information. If there is no Vs profile, the standard penetration tests are mainly used to determine the soil parameters. The Integrated DB Center of National Geotechnical Information manages the geotechnical survey data performed on the domestic ground, and there is the standard penetration test information of 400,000 holes. In this study, the possibility of quantitation the amplification coefficient for each region was examined to calculated the physical interactive seismic intensity based on geotechnical information. At this time, the shear wave column diagram was generated from the SPT-N value and ground response analysis was performed in the target area. The site coefficients for each zone and the seismic intensity distribution for the seismic motion present a significant difference according to the analysis method and the regional setting.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.1 s.47
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• pp.33-39
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• 2006

Parameters including the seismic sources and the elastic wave propagation characteristics were analysed using the observed ground motions from 3 Kyoungju region earthquakes. The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was applied to invert all the variables non-linearly and simultaneously with S wave energy In frequency domain. Average stress drop of 3 events and local attenuation parameter ${\kappa}$ were estimated to about 48-bar and 0.0312 respectively. Regional attenuation parameter, Qo and ${\eta}$, were also estimated to be about 417 and 0.83. ${\kappa}$ values are much higher than that of EUS, even though smaller than that of WUS. All these values resultant from this study show that there are differences in some parameters of other studios due to differences in the governing equation. of acceleration motions

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.238-247
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• 2020

This study simulated strong ground motion waveforms in the southern Korean Peninsula, based on the physical earthquake modeling of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) BroadBand Platform (BBP). Characteristics of intensity attenuation were investigated for M 6.0-7.0 events, incorporating the site effects. The SCEC BBP is software generates broadband (0-10 Hz) ground-motion waveforms for earthquake scenarios. Among five available modeling methods in the v16.5 platform, we used the Song Model. Approximately 50 earthquake scenarios each were simulated for M 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0 events. Representative metrics such as peak ground acceleration (PGA) and peak ground velocity (PGV) were obtained from the synthetic waveforms that were simulated before and after the consideration of site effects (V_S30). They were then empirically converted to distribution of instrumental intensity. The intensity that considers the site effects is amplified at low rather than high V_S30 zones.