Reduction of peak ground velocity by nonlinear soil response — II: excitation by a P-wave pulse

High‐frequency decay of Fourier spectra of strong motion acceleration and nonlinear site response

“…To be useful for engineering applications, the lessons learned then have to be extrapolated to the domain of damaging levels of strong motion amplitudes in a typical urban environment where soft sediments and soils will be associated to various degrees with nonlinear site response. 38,39 To a degree, the nonlinear site response can be beneficial because it reduces the power of strong motion waves entering into the structures, [40][41][42][43][44][45][46] but it also changes the site characteristics inferred from small amplitude, linear site response analyses. [47][48][49][50] Consequently, it is not sufficient to state that the data used for the analysis of κ correspond to a certain earthquake magnitude unless the distance to the fault is also documented.…”