Assessment of potential ground motions in seismically active regions is essential for purposes of seismic design and analysis. Peak ground motion intensity values and frequency content of seismic excitations are required for reliable seismic design, analysis and retrofitting of structures. In regions of sparse or no strong ground motion records, ground motion simulations provide physics-based synthetic records. These simulations provide not only the earthquake engineering parameters but also give insight into the mechanisms of the earthquakes. This thesis presents strong ground motion simulations in three regions of intense seismic activity. Stochastic finite-fault simulation methodology with a dynamic corner frequency approach is applied to three case studies performed in D&uuml / zce, L&rsquo / Aquila and Erzincan regions. In D&uuml / zce study, regional seismic source, propagation and site parameters are determined through validation of the simulations against the records. In L&rsquo / Aquila case study, in addition to study of the regional parameters, the limitations of the method in terms of simulating the directivity effects are also investigated. In Erzincan case study, where there are very few records, the optimum model parameters are determined using a large set of simulations with an error-minimization scheme. Later, a parametric sensitivity study is performed to observe the variations in simulation results to small perturbations in input parameters. Results of this study confirm that stochastic finite-fault simulation method is an effective technique for generating realistic physics-based synthetic records of large earthquakes in near field regions.

Nonlinear dynamic analysis is a required step in seismic performance evaluation of many structures. Performing such an analysis requires input ground motions, which are often obtained through simulations, due to the lack of sufficient records representing a given scenario. As seismic ground motions are characterized by time-varying amplitude and frequency content, and the response of nonlinear structures is sensitive to the temporal variations in the seismic energy input, ground motion non-stationarities should be taken into account in simulations. This paper describes a nonparametric approach for modeling and prediction of non-stationary ground motions. Using Relevance Vector Machines, a regression model which takes as input a set of seismic predictors, and produces as output the expected evolutionary power spectral density, conditioned on the predictors. A demonstrative example is presented, where recorded and predicted ground motions are compared in time, frequency, and time-frequency domains. Analysis results indicate reasonable match between the recorded and predicted quantities.

Earthquake is undoubtedly one of the greatest natural disasters that can induce serious structural damage and huge losses of properties and lives. The resulting destructive consequences not only have made structural seismic analysis and design much more important but have impelled the necessity of more realistic representation of ground motions, such as inclusion of ground motion spatial variations in earthquake modelling and seismic analysis and design of structures. Recorded seismic ground motions exhibit spatial variations in their amplitudes and phases, and the spatial variabilities have an important effect on the responses of structures extended in space, such as long span bridges. Because of the multi-parametric nature and the complexity of the problems, the development of specific design provisions on spatial variabilities of ground motions in modern seismic codes has been impeded. Eurocode 8 is currently the only seismic standard worldwide that gives a set of detailed guidelines to explicitly tackle spatial variabilities of ground motions in bridge design, providing both a simplified design scheme and an analytical approach. However, there is gap between the code-specified provisions in Eurocode 8 and the realistic representation of spatially varying ground motions (SVGM) and the corresponding stochastic vibration analysis (SVA) approaches. This study is devoted to bridge this gap on modelling of SVGM and development of SVA approaches for structures extended in space under SVGM. A complete and realistic SVGM representation approach is developed by accounting for the incoherence effect, wave-passage effect, site-response effect, ground motion nonstationarity, tridirectionality, and spectra-compatibility. This effort brings together various aspects regarding rational seismic scenarios determination, comprehensive methods of accounting for varying site effects, conditional modelling of SVGM nonstationarity, and code-specified ground motion spectra-compatibility. A comprehensive, systematic, and efficient SVA methodology is derived for long span structures under tridirectional nonstationary SVGM. An absolute-response-oriented scheme of pseudo-excitation method and an improved high precision direct integration method are proposed to reduce the enormous computational effort of conventional nonstationary SVA. A scheme accounting for tridirectional varying site-response effect is incorporated in the nonstationary SVA scheme systematically. The proposed highly efficient and accurate SVA approach is implemented and verified in a general finite element analysis platform to make it readily applicable in SVA of complex structures. Based on the proposed SVA approach, parametric studies of two practical long span bridges under SVGM are conducted. To account for spatial randomness and variability of soil properties in soil-structure interaction analysis of structures under SVGM, a meshfree-Galerkin approach is proposed within the Karhunen-Loeve expansion scheme for representation of spatial soil properties modelled as a random field. The meshfree shape functions are proposed as a set of basis functions in the Galerkin scheme to solve integral equation of Karhunen-Loeve expansion, with a proposed optimization scheme in treating the compatibility between the target and analytical covariance models. The accuracy and validity of the meshfree-Galerkin scheme are assessed and demonstrated by representation of covariance models for various homogeneous and nonhomogeneous spatial fields. The developed modelling approaches of SVGM and the derived analytical SVA approaches can be applied to provide more refined solutions for quantitatively assessing code-specified design provisions and developing new design provisions. The proposed meshfree-Galerkin approach can be used to account for spatial randomness and variability of soil properties in soil-structure interaction analysis.

L’une des problématique scientifique majeure en sismologie est de pouvoir estimer les mouvements du sol attendus en un site pour un futur séisme. L’objectif de cette thèse est de tester et de valider deux méthodes de simulation des mouvements du sol basées sur l’approche des fonctions de Green empiriques et d’apporter des éléments pouvant aider au développement d’une méthodologie de simulation en aveugle. Dans une première partie, une méthode de simulation basée sur une approche stochastique en point-source est validée sur les données réelles de séismes récents bien instrumentés : le séisme des Saintes Mw6.4 et le séisme de L’Aquila Mw6.3. Nous avons développé une approche de simulation en aveugle en prenant en compte une incertitude sur le paramètre de rapport des chutes de contrainte C. Cette approche permet de générer un ensemble d’accélérogrammes synthétiques d’un séisme cible suffisamment variés pour être représentatifs d’un grand nombre de scénarios de sources possibles et prenant en compte dans un sens statistique de potentiels effets de directivité. Cette approche a également été appliquée à la simulation d’un séisme historique pyrénéen Mw6.1. Dans une seconde partie, nous nous appuyons sur un modèle de source étendue plus complexe, combinant des modèles cinématiques de sources composites fractales avec l’approche des FGEs. Le potentiel de la méthode est testé sur une application au séisme de L’Aquila. Cela a permis de produire des résultats très satisfaisants sur l’ensemble des paramètres des mouvements du sol analysés. Cette méthode de simulation apparaît comme étant très prometteuse pour la mise en œuvre d’une méthodologie de simulation en aveugle, même si la principale difficulté réside dans la nécessité de définir la variabilité de nombreux paramètres d’entrée mal connus dans le cadre de la simulation d’un futur séisme. / One of the major scientific problems in seismology is to estimate the ground motions expected at a given site from a future earthquake. The aim of this thesis is to test and validate two different methods of ground motions simulation based on the empirical Green’s function approach and to provide elements that can help to develop a blind simulation methodology. In a first part, a simulation method based on a stochastic point source approach is validated on the real data of recent earthquakes well instrumented : the Les Saintes earthquake Mw6.4 and the L’Aquila earthquake Mw6.3. We have developed a blind simulation approach by taking into account an uncertainty on the parameter of stress drop ratio C. This approach allows to generate a set of synthetic accelerograms of a target earthquake varied enough to be representative of a large number of possible source scenario and taking into account in a statistical sense potential directivity effects. This approach is also applied to the simulation of an historical Pyrenean earthquake Mw6.1. In a second part, we use a more complex extended source model, combining kinematic models of fractal composite sources with EGF approach. The potential of the method is tested on an application to L’Aquila earthquake. This has produced very satisfying results on all ground motion parameters analyzed. This simulation method appears to be very promising for the implementation of a blind simulation methodology, even if the main difficulty lies in the need to define the variability of many poorly known input parameters in the simulation of a future earthquake.