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Simulation of Ground Motions for the November 11, 2019, Mw 4.9, Le Teil, France Earthquake Using a Hybrid Approach

Description: 

The November 11, 2019, M_W 4.9 Le Teil earthquake occurred in the lower Rohn Valley of Southeastern France, a region characterized by moderate seismic activity. The earthquake resulted in surface ruptures (up to 15 cm uplift) despite its moderate magnitude. This event was located approximately 15 km from the Cruas nuclear power plant (NPP) and led to shutdown of the plant’s operating reactors. At the initiative of the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and the Électricité de France (EDF), and under the sponsorship of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international benchmark program named SMATCH was launched in 2022. The aim of this benchmark is to assess, in the case of the Le Teil seismic event, the best practices for predicting seismic ground motions at the Cruas site and their propagation in the reactor building.

In this study, a hybrid approach is used to simulate ground motions of the Le Teil earthquake at five stations, including Cruas NPP, where earthquake recording from the event are available. These five stations are located within 25 km of the earthquake epicenter. The simulation combines a kinematic source modeling along with a discrete wavenumber/finite element wave propagation model (Spudich and Xu, 2002) for the low frequency part with a stochastic finite-fault simulation model (Tang et al., 2021) for the high frequency part of the ground-motion. The low and high frequency portions are combined to develop a simulated broad-band ground-motion using a matched filter centered at 3.0 Hz. The simulations aim to investigate the suitability of the approaches used in modeling the ground motions. Results of simulations at the five stations are compared with the ground motion recordings in terms of time histories, Fourier spectra, and response spectra. Potential improvements on the simulation are discussed based on the comparison.

Session: Accuracy and Variability of Physics-based Ground Motion Modeling - II

Type: Oral

Date: 4/15/2025

Presentation Time: 05:00 PM (local time)

Presenting Author: Wei

Student Presenter: No

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