Comparing Accelerograms and Seismograms of Earthquakes and their Effects on Structures

Document Type : Articles

Authors

1 Hashtgerd Branch, Islamic Azad University, Alborz, Iran

2 International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES), Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Seismometers and accelerometers pick up velocity and acceleration of seismic events and have different applications, which are mostly used by seismologists and engineers, respectively. Therefore, they are not regularly installed in the same location. It is believed that acceleration and velocity records can be calculated by each other, regarding that acceleration is the derivative of velocity. However, this belief has not been confirmed yet. For example, calculated acceleration, through the derivative of the seismometer record, has not been validated by comparing with the recorded accelerograms. This paper tries to find an answer for this challenge by having a comparison between the recorded accelerograms and the one calculated from seismometer records. For this, an accelerometer and a seismometer, both from the same factory, were installed in Mormori after the main earthquake of this city on August 18, 2014, to record aftershocks. Four events with considerable accelerations were selected among the events and recorded by these two instruments. All recorded data were corrected, and then the recorded accelerograms are compared with those obtained from differentiating of the corresponding seismograms. Some quantitative parameters, as well as response spectrum and Fourier amplitude spectrum have been used for the comparison. The parameters indicate that there are some ignorable differences between the records; the average of the parameters, Cave, is greater than 9.0 for all records; therefore, there is an excellent fit between the compared records.
Response spectrums of the recorded accelerograms and the one obtained by differentiating respective seismograms are almost consistent for Tn<1.0 sec; however, they are different for longer vibrational periods. Therefore, for structures with a natural period of vibration (Tn) less than 1 sec, the required acceleration records for time history analysis can be calculated by differentiating the recorded seismograms. However, for structures with a longer natural period of vibration, accelerograms should be applied, and it is better not to rely on the acceleration record calculated by seismograms.

Keywords

References

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Bulletin of Earthquake Science and Engineering
Volume 3, Issue 3 - Serial Number 8
October 2016
Pages 49-59

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History

  • Receive Date: 31 October 2015
  • Revise Date: 19 February 2021
  • Accept Date: 26 December 2020

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