Empirical Correlations of Frequency-Content Parameters of Ground Motions with Other Intensity Measures

Abstract

ABSTRACT Empirical correlations between the frequency-content parameters of earthquake ground motions and amplitude-, cumulative-, and duration-based intensity measures (IMs) are examined in this study. Three commonly used scalar frequency-content parameters are considered, namely the mean period (Tm), the average spectral period (Tavg), and the smoothed spectral predominant period (T0). It is found that the frequency-content parameters have weakly negative correlations with high-frequency IMs such as peak ground acceleration (PGA) and spectral accelerations (SAs) at periods smaller than 0.3 s, low-to-moderate positive correlations with peak ground velocity (PGV) and SA within a period range of 0.5 s–10 s, negligible correlations with cumulative-based IMs, and weakly positive correlations (in the vicinity of 0.1–0.3) with significant durations. Simple piecewise parametric equations are proposed to fit the empirical correlations of Tm, Tavg, and T0 with SA over the entire period range. The presented correlation results and parametric models enable the frequency-content parameters to be easily used in various applications such as ground-motion selection and vector-based probabilistic seismic hazard analysis.