Ground Motion Models for rock sites in South Korea

Ground motion models (GMMs) play a pivotal role in both deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard assessments, which are essential for identifying the seismic safety of nuclear power plants. In regions with abundant seismic data, especially strong earthquake records, GMMs could be empirically derived. However, in areas like South Korea with scarce strong earthquake records, development of empirical GMMs is impractical, leading to the utilization of alternative methods such as stochastic simulations. There have been a few GMMs developed in South Korea, all of which relied on stochastically simulated motions. In this study, GMMs are developed for rock sites in South Korea using the hybrid empirical method (HEM) suggested by Campbell (2003). Western United States (WUS) is selected as a host region and five Next Generation Attenuation (NGA)-West2 GMMs are used as GMMs of the host region. The seismological parameters employed in the simulation, including effective point source distance, source and path duration, and path attenuation, duly encompass the findings of recent studies. The high-frequency spectral attenuation parameters, kappa, utilized as site attenuation parameters in ground motion simulations for the target region, are estimated in this study. It is primarily estimated using the classical method proposed by Anderson and Hough (1984). Additionally, the estimation process considers the standardized procedure and the recommended lower bound magnitude decisions put forth by Ktenidou et al. (2013) and Van Houtte et al. (2014), respectively. Since the shear wave velocity for bedrock is considered to be 760 m/s in South Korea, the site amplification functions have been applied with reference to this velocity for both the host and target regions. The adjustment factors obtained from simulated ground motions in both the host and target regions are applied to adjust NGA-West 2 Ground Motion Models (GMMs). Derived GMMs are for magnitudes from 5.0 to 7.5 and rupture distances from 10 to 500 km. Median GMMs are provided with aleatory standard deviations. Predictive GMMs are compared with observed ground motions from the available earthquake records for moment magnitudes 5.0 and 5.5. The notable advantages of the GMMs developed in this study are as follows: Distinct from previous researches utilizing stochastic methods, the implementation of HEM served to complement the limitations inherent in stochastic approaches such as lack of near-source ground motion characteristics. Defining the sites where GMMs are employed at Vs₃₀ = 760m/s enables the derivation of seismic motions applicable to rock layers having Vs₃₀ of 760m/s. Since aleatory standard deviations are quantitatively defined, they can serve as the sigma parameter within GMMs in Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA).