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16 Aug 2008, 8:45am - 12:30pm

Seismic Source and Its Effect on Site Response Observed in

Chilean Subductive Environment
Ramón Verdugo
University of Chile, Chile

César Pastén
University of Chile, Chile

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Verdugo, Ramón and Pastén, César, "Seismic Source and Its Effect on Site Response Observed in Chilean
Subductive Environment" (2008). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering.
28.
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 SEISMIC SOURCE AND ITS EFFECT ON SITE RESPONSE OBSERVED IN
CHILEAN SUBDUCTIVE ENVIRONMENT
Ramón Verdugo César Pastén
Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering,
University of Chile, Chile University of Chile, Chile

ABSTRACT

Among other factors that influence the seismic motion resulting at the ground surface are the characteristics of the seismic source.
This factor has been recognized that would affect the frequency content of the resulting motion. In this context, Chilean subductive
environment provides a considerable variety of seismogenic sources allowing the study of this factor. The analysis of spectrograms of
recorded earthquakes originated by different seismogenic sources at different site conditions is presented. The results indicate that in
the case of shallow thrust earthquakes a predominant frequency can be observed, which agrees with the predominant frequency
obtained by the H/V spectral ratio (Nakamura´s procedure), validating the applicability of the H/V spectral ratio to estimate the
predominant frequency of a site and at the same time showing that the soil deposits are excited in modes associated with vertical shear
wave propagation. On the other hand, the spectrograms of intraplate earthquakes show predominant frequencies covering a wide
range, which are different and higher than the predominant frequency obtained by H/V spectral ratio. Similar results were obtained for
cortical earthquakes.

INTRODUCTION Other important factors that influence the seismic motion

Strong empirical evidences indicate that the resulting motion
at the ground surface is strongly affected by the ground
characteristics, basically, geomorphology, geotechnical
properties and thickness of the sediments. For instance, soft
soil deposits constituted by saturated fine soils have shown a
significant amplification at the ground surface, which can be
confirmed through the observed damage in buildings and
others structures. A remarkable case of amplification was
observed during the 1985 Mexico City earthquake of
Magnitude 8.1, since the seismic motion was amplified by a
factor of 20, or even more, on sites associated with deep soil
deposits of soft fines materials (Celebi et al. 1987; Singh et al.
1993). On the contrary, rock outcrops and stiff soil deposits
constituted, for example, by dense gravels or cobbles, have
shown less significant seismic disturbances with minor
damage of structures placed on them (Borcherdt, 1970 and
2002; Seed et al. 1988). The Chilean experience with major
seismic events confirms the importance of ground properties.
The 1906 Valparaiso earthquake of Magnitude ranging from
8.3 to 8.6 and the 1960 Valdivia earthquake of Magnitude
greater than 9, generated severe destruction on areas where the
ground was constituted by soft and loose sediments and
surprisingly reduce damage on zones constituted by stiff
ground and rock outcrops (Montessus de Ballore, 1911;
Watanabe et al. 1960; Weischet, 1960).
resulting at the ground surface are the characteristics of the
seismic source. Although these factors have been less studied,
it has been recognized that they would likely affect the
frequency content of the resulting motion. Here it is important
to emphasize, from an engineering point of view, that,
together with the amplitude of the accelerations, the frequency
content of a ground motion play an important role in the
seismic response of structures. Accordingly, it is necessary to
know how different seismogenic sources may affect the
frequency contents of ground motions. In this context, a
subductive environment allows that considerable variety of
seismogenic sources can take place and therefore, their effects
on the resulting motion at the ground surface can be studied.
Thus taking into account that predominant frequencies of
seismic events are relevant in engineering, ground motions
originated by different seismogenic sources in a subductive
environment in Central Chile have been recorded in different
soil deposits and analyzed in terms of their frequency content.
SANTIAGO BASIN
Santiago, capital city of Chile, is located approximately at
latitude 33°27'S and longitude 70°40'W, around 100 km inland
from the Pacific Ocean. This city holds the main concentration
of infrastructure and economic activity of Chile, with a
metropolitan area that has a population close to 5.5 millions

Paper No. 3.53 1

that corresponds to more than one third of the total population
of Chile.
From a geological point of view, at the south of parallel 33º
Chile is characterized by the existence of three
morphostructural units running parallel to each other with a
north-south orientation. From east to west, these units are Los
Andes Mountain Range, Central Valley and Coastal Mountain
Range. This configuration was probably originated during the
maximum compression stage that took place during the
Oligocene – Pliocene epoch (Thiele, 1980).
A general view of Santiago basin is shown in Fig. 1. This
basin located in the Central Valley presents a major axis of
approximately 60 km in the north-south direction and a minor
axis of 40 km east-west. By means of gravity measurements, it
has been estimated that the bedrock would be rather irregular,
with maximum depths of up to 0.5 km and with important
rock outcrops, such as the hills San Cristobal, Renca and
Chena. According to these dimensions it is possible to
conclude that Santiago basin corresponds to a quite large and
shallow basin. This is an important characteristic that permits
to indicate that any basin effect should be negligible.
Fig. 1. Santiago basin
Paper No. 3.53
The Mapocho and Maipo rivers are the principal tributaries
that have filled most of this basin with coarse sediments
consisting of sandy gravel with less than 5% of fines. Other
important sediments are those deposited in the north of the
basin, constituted by saturated fine soils, by the creeks Colina
and Lampa. . The eastern part of Santiago basin, at the toe of
Los Andes range, is associated with sediments that have been
brought down by numerous ravines, and basically correspond
to debris cones. Additionally, it is important to mention the
presence of pumices or volcanic ashes in some sectors of the
basin, which would be associated with a great volcanic
eruption that took place in the past (Valenzuela, 1978).
Generally, the alluvial coarse materials present high strength
and high stiffness with shear wave velocities typically around
800 m/s (Acevedo, 1973). The pumices also present good
geotechnical properties with shear wave velocities ranging
from 400 to 600 m/s (Lagos, 2003). The fine materials
existing in the north part of the basin are mainly clayey and
silty soils of low plasticity and present shear wave velocities
estimated in the range of 250 to 400 m/s.
MAIN SEISMOGENIC SOURCES OF CENTRAL CHILE
Chile is located to the south-west of the American Continent,
and a significant part of its territory is in a subductive seismic
environment, associated with the collision between Nazca and
South America plates. The convergence rate of these plates is
estimated in the range of 65 to 90 mm/year. As a result of this
tectonic interaction, Chile presents one of the highest rate of
seismicity of the world and includes the larger ever recorded
ground motion; the 1960 Valdivia earthquake with M=9.5
(Madariaga, 1998).
Even though Chilean natives have a rich variety of spoken
tales describing the high seismicity and volcanic activity of
this country, only after the Spanish arrival, in XV century,
written information is available. Using this information the
sequence of large seismic events occurred in the central part of
Chile was reconstituted and showed a notable. periodicity
Between latitudes 32º S and 34.5º S the major seismic events
that have been reported occurred as follows: 1575, 1647,
1730, 1822, 1906 and 1985. This sequence is rather regular,
with intervals in the range of 72 to 93 years, with an average
recurrence interval of 82 years.
The seismic activity between latitudes 32º S and 35º S
associated with events larger than Magnitude 4.5 and recorded
since 1990 by the Chilean Seismological Service of University
of Chile (SSN) is shown in Fig. 2. To visualize the distribution
of the hypocenters according to their depth, all the seismic
events located in this area have been projected to the vertical
plane passing through the depicted black line. It is observed
that most of the seismic activity takes place between the
oceanic trench and the coast following the Benioff´s plane,
which according to the existing data in this part of the country
dips following an angle of approximately 32º. It is important
to point out that a rather shallow seismicity into the
2
continental plate and below Los Andes Range is also
observed. In addition, it is worth mentioning that some Cortical
relatively regular seismic activity is occurring beyond the earthquakes
NAZCA
oceanic trench (Madariaga, 1998; Barrientos, 2004). To PLATE SOUTH AMERICAN PLATE

summarize, different seismic sources can be clearly identified

as sketched in Fig. 3, and described as follows: Outer rise
earthquakes Shallow Thrust
earthquakes

- Shallow Thrust earthquakes that take place along the upper
part of the Bennioff’s plane near the coast up to a depth of 55
km. These events are also called Interplate earthquakes.
- Deep Compressional and Tensional earthquakes that take
place in the subducting Nazca plate deeper than 55 km. These
events are also called Intraplate earthquakes.
- Cortical earthquakes that take place bellow Los Andes range
into the South American plate.
- Outer rise earthquakes that take place into the Nazca plate
beyond the trench and likely associated with the bending of
the subducting plate.
Thus seismic hazard of Santiago basin is governed by these
different seismogenic sources, which may have different
resulting motions at the ground surface.
Deep Compressional &
Tensional earthquakes
Fig. 3. Seismogenic sources in subductive environment
SEISMIC STATIONS AND RECORDED EARTHQUAKES
Seismic events recorded in four seismic stations located in the
sediments of Santiago basin were analyzed. The location of
the seismic stations and the type of instrument are indicated in
Table 1. Two of these stations are managed by the Chilean
Seismological Service of University of Chile (SSN) and the
others two by the Department of Structural Engineering of the
Catholic University of Chile (CU).
Table 1. Seismic Stations

Latitude Longitude
Station Instrument
(º) (º)
ANTU -33.569 -70.634 EpiSensor, FBA ES-T
PUEX -33.441 -70.758 FBA-23
PCQ -33.364 -70.702 SMAC-MD-I
AES -33.459 -70.548 SSA-1-I

A serie of earthquakes of magnitude greater than 4.5 with

epicenters located inside the area defined by the coordinates
32,0ºS to 34,5ºS and 69,5ºW to 73,0ºW were utilized. The
location and depth of these earthquakes are shown in Fig. 4.

PREDOMINANT FREQUENCY AT THE SITE OF

SEISMIC STATIONS
Depth (km) Altitude (m)

The predominant frequencies of four sites where seismic

stations are installed in the sediments of Santiago basin were
determined. The ratio between the horizontal and vertical
(H/V) spectra suggested by Nakamura (1989) provides an
attractive procedure for estimating the predominant frequency
of a site (Nakamura, 1989; Lermo et al., 1993; Lachet et al,
1994; Saita et al., 2001). Accordingly, the H/V spectral ratio
using ambient vibrations was adopted in this study.

At each site, vertical and horizontals ambient noise vibrations

Longitude were recorded using a Lennartz seismometer, LE-3D/5s, and a
Fig. 2. Seismic activity in Central Chile. M > 4.5, 1990 to Cityshark station. These instruments were provided by the
2008 (Chilean Seismological Service of University of Chile) Institute for Nuclear Safety and Radioprotection of France
(IRSN) under a cooperative research work.

Paper No. 3.53 3

 computed, combining the horizontal components by a
quadratic mean. Finally, the results of the different windows
were averaged (Pasten, 2007).

The H/V spectral ratios obtained in the sites of the seismic

stations are presented in Fig. 5, including the mean value plus
and minus one standard deviation. The site of the seismic
station ANTU presents an H/V spectral ratio quite flat,
without a clear predominant frequency that can be the result of
the stiff soil existing in the area, consisting of cobbles and
gravelly materials deposited by Maipo River. However, a
value around 1.0 Hz could be selected as natural frequency.
On the other hand, the site of the seismic station PUEX
presents an H/V spectral ratio with two peaks. The
predominant frequencies estimated for the sites where the
seismic stations are installed are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Predominant frequencies at the site of seismic station

Seismic Predominant Frequencies
Station (Hz)
ANTU 1.0
PUEX 0.38 and 1.4
PCQ 1.3
AES 0.55

Fig. 4. Earthquakes analyzed in this study

The sampling frequency adopted was 125Hz and the length of

each measurement was 15 minutes. To analyze the noise
records recommendations given by SESAME project (Koller
et al. 2004), one of the most important reference in the
methodology of the H/V spectral ratio, were adopted. The
stationary noise vibrations were selected from the recorded
signal using a signal amplitude criterion. A short term window
of 1 second and a long term window of 25 seconds were
defined. The average amplitude of each window was identified
as STA (short term average) and LTA (long term average). A
stationary noise vibration was considered acceptable if the
ratio STA/LTA reached values between 0.25 and 1.75.
Consequently, the selected parts of the signal or windows
resulted with a length of 25 sec. It was considered an overlap
percentage of 50% between windows. The noise
measurements were considered suitable for analysis if they
had at least 25 windows that satisfied the previous criterion. ´
Fig. 5. H/V spectral ratios computed at the sites of seismic
The processing of suitable individual windows included first stations
tapering each component of the signal , Vertical (V),
Horizontal 1 (H1) and Horizontal 2 (H2), using a cosine taper
function with a length of 5% of the total window length.
Second, The FFT was applied to each component, so the three
spectral amplitudes were obtained and then smoothed using a
function defined by Konno and Ohmachi (1998), with a
bandwidth coefficient, b = 30. Third, H/V spectral ratios were

Paper No. 3.53 4

 Then, different frequencies show up during the shaking, but in
the case of interplate earthquakes there is a marked tendency
indicating the development of frequencies similar to the
predominant frequency obtained from the H/V spectral ratio.
This phenomenon is more evident toward the end of the
shaking (coda), when the ground should be responding under
free vibration.

On the other hand, in the case of intraplate and cortical

earthquakes predominant frequencies can be observed
throughout the shaking, but they are in most of the cases
different than the predominant frequency obtained from the
H/V spectral ratio. Additionally, toward the end of these
earthquakes, in most of the cases the ground keeps the natural
frequency observed before the shaking.

A possible explanation of these results is associated with the

Fig. 5. H/V spectral ratios computed at the sites of seismic
stations (cont.)
potential of the earthquake of generating surface waves. Deep
earthquakes, or intraplate earthquakes, are not expected to
generate significant surfaces waves in the epicentral area.
Therefore, they do not excite the vibration modes associated
with shear wave propagation, the theoretical background of
the H/V spectral ratio method.

FREQUENCY CONTENT OF EARTHQUAKE RECORDS

To investigate the site effect on the resulting motion at the 1.0 Hz

ground surface, the frequency content of the recorded
earthquakes has been analyzed in detail through spectrograms.

The procedure to compute the spectrograms consisted in

passing a time window and applying the Fast Fourier
Transform. The signal was analyzed in terms of temporal
windows of five seconds, which were overlapped 50% (2.5
seconds). In each window the following steps were performed:
base line correction, using of a cosine taper of 5% of the
length of the window, application of the FFT, and smoothing
the resulted FFT using a moving averaging of 5 points. In
order to effectively visualize the frequency content throughout
the time history of the recorded accelerations, the FFT of each
window was normalized by its own maximum value. 1.4 Hz
Therefore, regardless the amplitude of the signal, the
maximum amplitude of the normalized spectrum is one. The
resulting normalized spectrum of each window was associated
with the mean time of the window.

Additionally, in order to have a better picture of the

predominant frequency of each window, the amplitudes of the
normalized spectrum equal and greater than 0.8 were
represented in red. Thus, the spectral amplitudes equal or
greater than 80% can be clearly visualized.
Fig. 6. Spectrograms of inteplate earthquake recorded in
Typical spectrograms of interplate, intraplate and cortical stations ANTU and PUEX
earthquakes are shown in Figs. 6, 7 and 8, respectively. In
these spectrograms, the predominant frequencies established
for the site are also indicated. It is interesting to observe that
before starting the seismic event, the sites are commonly
vibrating at rather high frequencies, in the range of 8 to 16 Hz.

Paper No. 3.53 5

 On the contrary, interplate earthquakes seem to generate
sufficient surface waves or vertical propagation of shear
1.0 Hz
waves to clearly excite this mode of vibration which definitely
shows up during the free vibration at the end of the
earthquake.

CONCLUSIONS

The analysis of spectrograms shows that initially the ground is

commonly vibrating at frequencies ranging from 8 to 16 Hz.
Afterward, when the earthquake hits the ground surface,
different frequencies show up during the shaking. In the case
1.4 Hz of interplate earthquakes a predominant frequency can be
observed specially toward the end of the earthquake. This
predominant frequency agrees with the predominant frequency
obtained by the H/V spectral ratio (Nakamura´s procedure).
This phenomenon is more evident when seismic disturbance is
over and the ground is responding under free vibration. These
results have double implications; firstly they validate the
applicability of the H/V spectral ratio to estimate the
predominant frequency of a site and secondly, these results
show that interplate earthquakes excite soil deposits in modes
associated with vertical shear wave propagation.

Fig. 7. Spectrograms of intraplate earthquake recorded in The spectrograms of intraplate earthquakes show predominant
stations ANTU and PUEX frequencies covering a wide range, which are different and
higher than the predominant frequency obtained by H/V
spectral ratio. Similar results were obtained for cortical
earthquakes.
1.0 Hz

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors acknowledge the cooperation provided by the

Institute for Nuclear Safety and Radioprotection of France
during the ambient vibration measurements done in the
Santiago Basin, and the grant provided by MIDEPLAN for the
research project: Millennium Science Nucleus in
Seismotectonic and Seismic Hazard.

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Paper No. 3.53 6

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