Selection of real accelerograms for the seismic response analysis of the historical town of Nicastro (Southern Italy) during the March 1638 Calabria earthquake

• Published in: Engineering structures Vol. 30; no. 8; pp. 2211 - 2222
• Main Authors: Pagliaroli, Alessandro, Lanzo, Giuseppe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-08-2008
• Subjects: Deterministic seismic hazard analysis; Historical centres; Real accelerograms; Scaling; Selection; Spectral matching; Spectral matching; Scaling; Historical centres; Deterministic seismic hazard analysis; Selection; Real accelerograms
• ISSN: 0141-0296; 1873-7323
• DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2007.06.002

Real accelerograms are nowadays an emerging option for defining the input to geotechnical and structural dynamic analyses. A key issue is the selection of appropriate acceleration time-histories since seismic design code recommendations are limited in this respect and also well-established procedures are not available. In the paper a simple approach for selecting and scaling a set of real accelerograms was followed which took into consideration magnitude and distance search windows, record-to-record variability of spectral ordinates with respect to the target spectrum and the prevention of seismic event domination within a set. This procedure was applied to a real case, i.e. the selection of real accelerograms representative of the March 1638 Calabria earthquake that severely struck the historical town of Nicastro (Southern Italy). The selected time-histories represent an appropriate input for the numerical response analyses of the site to adequately evaluate the seismic hazard, which is a fundamental step of seismic risk evaluation.