Development of a Single Station 6C-Approach for Array Analysis and Microzonation: Using Vertical Rotation Rate to Estimate Love-Wave Disperion Curves and Direction Finding

Abstract:

Microzonation, i.e. the estimation of (shear) wave velocity profiles of the upper few 100m in dense 2D surface grids is one of the key methods to understand the variation in seismic hazard caused by ground shaking events. In this presentation we introduce a novel method for estimating the Love-wave phase velocity dispersion by using ambient noise recordings. We use the vertical component of rotational motions inherently present in ambient noise and the well established relation to simultaneous recordings of transverse acceleration. In this relation the frequency dependent phase velocity of a plane SH (or Love)-type wave acts as a proportionality factor between the anti-correlated amplitudes of both measures. In a first step we used synthetic data sets with increasing complexity to evaluate the proposed technique and the developed algorithm to extract the direction and amplitude of the incoming ambient noise wavefield measured at a single site. Since reliable weak rotational motion sensors are not yet readily available, we apply array derived rotation measurements in order to test our method. We next use the technique to analyze different real data sets of ambient noise measurements as well as seismic recordings at active volcanoes and compare these results with findings of the Spatial AutoCorrelation technique which was applied to the same data set. We demonstrate that the newly developed technique shows comparable results to more classical, strictly array based methods. Furthermore, we show that as soon as portable weak motion rotational motion sensors are available, a single 6C-station approach will be feasible, not only for microzonation but also for general array applications, with performance comparable to more classical techniques. An important advantage, especially in urban environments, is that with this approach, the number of seismic stations needed is drastically reduced.