Journal of Seismology 6: 547555, 2002. 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

547

Derivation of design soil coefcients (S) and response spectral shapes for Eurocode 8 using the European Strong-Motion Database
Julien Rey1 , Ezio Faccioli1, & Julian J. Bommer2
1 Presently 2 Department

at C nergy/IRSN 6068 Avenue du G n ral Leclerc, 92265 Fontenay-aux-Roses Cedex, France; e e e of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2BU, UK; Author for correspondence: tel: 390223994337, e-mail: faccioli@stru.polimi.it

Received 19 June 2002; accepted in revised form 19 November 2001

Key words: acceleration response spectra, Eurocode 8, European Strong-Motion Database, local site conditions, soil coefcients, spectral shapes, spectral ratios, Housner Spectrum Intensity

Abstract A revision is presently under way to upgrade the status of the Design recommendations for earthquake resistance of structures, commonly referred to as Eurocode 8 (or EC8). In order to improve the denition of the design elastic response spectra (ERS) as dened in the Eurocode 8 Part 1 (Draft May 2001), the values of the soil amplication factors have been calculated for sites on sedimentary soils, both stiff (category B) and soft (category C), with respect to rock sites (category A), such as contemplated in EC8. The work was performed by a systematic study of response spectra as a function of magnitude and site conditions, using records from the European Strong-Motion Database. The results conrm the occurrence of systematic spectral amplication on sedimentary soils with respect to reference rock in a large set of European strong motion data. Such amplication has been quantied through a measure derived from the Housner Spectrum Intensity denition. The values of the soil coefcients recommended in the current version of EC 8 are shown to be realistic for category C, in the case of a moderate seismicity context. However the values for subsoil class B need to be signicantly increased both for the moderate and high seismicity context. Introduction A revision is presently under way that will upgrade the status of the Design recommendations for earthquake resistance of structures, commonly referred to as Eurocode 8 (or EC8), to that of a European norm. The process is due to end in late 2002. The revision entails a number of signicant changes and updates with respect to the current version (1994), including a new denition of the design elastic response spectra (ERS) and a new classication of site conditions, or classes of soil prole (CEN, 2001). The inuence of site conditions on the design seismic action is taken into account in EC8 both through differences in the ERS shape and through a frequencyindependent amplication coefcient S, called soil coefcient. In other seismic codes, e.g. the Uniform Building Code (UBC 97), two parameters are used that imply different ratios of soil-to-rock spectral amplitudes. The 1994 version of EC8, due to the lack of ad hoc supporting studies, specied S = 1 for rock and stiff soil proles but S = 0.9 for softer soil deposits. At an earlier stage of the present revision process some preliminary estimates of S-values have been made, derived from amplication factors of the ground motion attenuation relations for European data by averaging over signicant ranges of the vibration period. In this work we illustrate a more rigorous approach to the estimation of the S coefcients for Eurocode 8 based on a systematic analysis of response spectra ordinates as a function of magnitude and site conditions, in conjunction with the denition of the new ERS shapes. The basic data are acceleration records from the European Strong-Motion Database.

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Table 1. Classication of ground conditions Ground type Vs,30 (Boore et al., 1993) (m/s) Rock Stiff soil Soft soil Very soft soil > 750 360750 180360 < 180 Subsoil class in EC8 Vs,30 (CEN, 2001) (m/s) A B C D > 800 360800 180360 < 180

Data selection The primary source of data was the European StrongMotion Database, or ESD (Ambraseys et al., 2000), which contains a set of 1068 uncorrected and uniformly corrected three-component strong-motion records and response spectra from Europe and adjacent regions (mainly Turkey and Iran), coming from 432 earthquakes and 376 stations. For each record, information is provided on the earthquake (magnitude, location, focal mechanism) and on the accelerograph station (location, distance to epicentre or to causative fault, soil conditions). Independent additional data on the site characteristics of a number of recording stations, specically concerning the prole of the S wave propagation velocity VS with depth, were obtained from a number of sources including: for selected Italian strong-motion sites, the personal data les of E. Faccioli (for the most part originally provided by ENEL, the national Electricity Board of Italy, in the form of internal or even condential technical reports, see also Faccioli, 1992), for selected Greek sites, a data le expressly provided by K. Pitilakis (2000, personal written communication to E. Faccioli), of the University of Thessaloniki, as well as an article by Gazetas et al. (1990), for selected Montenegro sites, recording the strong 1980 Montenegro earthquake, an article by Talaganov et al. (1982). The stations for which we could obtain the Vs prole are listed in the Appendix. Local site conditions For many of the recording stations in the ESD the site conditions are loosely dened, for instance alluvium, or unknown. For the vast number of stations which have a supposedly reliable site classication,

including those listed in the Appendix, the measured or estimated average shear-wave velocity Vs to a depth of 30 m (Vs,30), as shown in the rst two columns of Table 1, was used as site descriptor following earlier studies (Boore et al., 1993). As indicated in the last two columns of Table 1, this approach is adopted with slight modications also in the updated version of EC 8 (CEN, 2001); in the latter document, however, ranges of the NSPT blowcount and of the undrained shear resistance cu are also used as descriptors of the soil class and, moreover, three additional subsoil classes (denoted as E, S1 and S2) are provided. Herein, we used only three categories of ground conditions, i.e. rock, stiff soil, and soft soil according to the last column of Table 1. Indeed, only 3 stations on very soft soil conditions are included in the ESD, and no record of these stations was retained for the analysis. We excluded data from a particular accelerograph station on rock (Nocera Umbra, in Central Italy) present with several records in the ESD, consistently exhibiting strong site amplication effects; detailed recent studies indicate that the latter are probably due to lateral heterogeneity related to a nearby fault zone (Marra et al., 2000). In the ESD, there are 73 stations on rock, 61 on stiff soil and 36 on soft soil. Moreover, for 16 Italian stations, 11 Greek stations and 4 stations from former Yugoslavia the Vs prole has been retrieved as previously described. Concerning these data, the table in the Appendix shows that only three station sites were identied as misclassied in the original ESD while for four more the site conditions were previously unknown. This suggests that our results should not be signicantly biased by wrong site attributions in the original database, but a larger sample of well documented stations would be required to draw more reliable quantitative indications. The sample size for the different site conditions is shown Table 2. Only records from stations with known soil conditions were used. Magnitude The magnitude of each earthquake of the database is reported in the ESD: it can be either moment magnitude Mw, or surface-wave magnitude Ms, or local magnitude ML , or body-wave magnitude mb . Ms has been used here as much as possible (161 earthquakes), being probably the most appropriate scale for the range at study (4.0<M<6.8, only the August 1999 Turkey earthquake with Ms 7.8 is beyond

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Table 2. Number of horizontal accelerograms as a function of magnitude and site conditions 4.0<M<4.5 Rock Stiff soil Soft soil 72 (2) 68 (20) 37 (14) 4.5<M<5.0 86 (8) 67 (17) 37 (12) 5.0<M<5.5 78 (4) 66 (16) 41 (10) 5.5<M<6.0 72 (5) 64 (24)44 (28) 41 (10)20 (6) 6.0<M 29 (14)

In parentheses, the number of records from stations with a geotechnical description, listed in the Appendix.

this range). ML was also used for 15 earthquakes in the range where MS ML (4.5<M<5.5, see Ambraseys and Bommer (1990)), and MW for 2 earthquakes whose magnitudes were in the range where MS MW (6.0<M<7.0, see Ambraseys & Free, 1997). To limit dispersion, it was chosen to use only records from earthquakes with M>4.0. Since it was one of the primary goals of this study to investigate the dependence of estimated S factors on magnitude, the full magnitude range covered by the data was subdivided into the ve equal intervals shown in Table 2. As explained in a later section, in the EC8 update the dependence of spectral shapes and S factors on magnitude is accounted for by means of two types of spectra corresponding to different magnitude ranges. Other restrictions Data recorded at no further than 50 km epicentral or fault distance from the accelerograph station were considered here, to retain only motions of engineering interest. Also, the analysis was restricted to horizontal motions, so that only the horizontal components of each record were kept. The two horizontal components were almost systematically used.

Method of analysis and rst-stage results A rst stage of data processing was carried out in the following steps: 1. 5% damped acceleration response spectra were saved and sorted for all the records of the ESD databank selected by the previous criteria. 2. Spectral ordinates Sa (T) for 121 values of the vibration period T (from 0.04 to 4.0 s, equally spaced on log scale) were multiplied by the distance R between station and rupturing fault, or by epicentral distance when the former was not

available. Such distance normalisation is supported by the evidence of attenuation relations, which show that response spectral accelerations are consistently proportional to the distance elevated to an exponent close to 1. Thus, shapes of spectra do not appreciably change with distance (Bommer and Scott, 2000). 3. The log average and standard deviation of normalised spectral ordinates RSa (T) were calculated and plotted in each category of soil condition and interval of magnitude. A sample plot resulting after this rst stage of the data processing is illustrated in Figure 1. Since the soft soil and the stiff soil curves lie consistently above the rock curve in the gure, and the same was found for other magnitude intervals, it makes sense to estimate in a simple manner the average amplication due to the material properties of the sediments with respect to rock through a single period-independent factor. Such estimation has been carried out as a second step, by the following procedure. The average normalised spectral curves for each ground category were integrated in the range of periods between 0.05 and 2.5 s. Then, for each magnitude interval we calculated the Spectrum Intensities IA = IRock , IB = ISt iff , IC = ISof t , originally dened by Housner (1952) for response spectral velocities, and which we have adapted for spectral accelerations. The calculated quantities are specically IA,B,C =
2.5

RSA (T )dT
0.05

(1)

where the quantity with the overbar under the integral denotes the average normalised spectral curve for each site category A, B, C, and for each magnitude interval. Sensitivity tests performed with different integration limits conrmed that the interval of periods for which the results seem to be most stable is from 0.05 s to 2.5 s.

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Figure 1. Mean, distance-normalised acceleration response spectra for earthquakes with 5.0M<5.5 (bottom curves) and with M>6.0 (top curves). The shading in the upper part corresponds to the region between the mean and the mean +1 standard deviation band for the normalised rock spectrum. Table 3. Set of soil coefcients S obtained for the selected magnitude intervals Soil factor SB SC 4.0<M<4.5 1.38 1.22 4.5<M<5.0 1.15 1.16 5.0<M<5.5 1.52 1.74 5.5<M<6.0 1.39 1.27 6.0<M 1.38 1.49

Finally, we calculated for each magnitude interval the ratios SB = IB /IA and SC = IC /IA which provide a scaling factor for the site effect that evidently represents an average amplication global affecting the whole spectrum. The results, given in Table 3, indicate a fairly stable behaviour of SB with respect to magnitude, but a nearly random behaviour of SC . This difference could be both related to the consistently larger size of the stiff soil data samples, and to

larger uncertainties in the attribution of a number of recording stations to the soft soil class. Given the lack of apparent trends of the SB and SC values with respect to magnitude, we decided to restrict our focus on two classes of magnitude only, considered to be representative of the two seismicity contexts dened in EC 8, discussed at the beginning of next section. More specically, we chose the magnitude range between 4.5 and 5.5 as representative of the low and moderate seismicity context (Type 2

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Figure 2. Class A sites, Type 1 Spectrum and average normalised spectrum from 5 European accelerograms.

Figure 3. Class A sites, Type 2 Spectrum and average normalised spectrum from 9 European accelerograms.

Spectrum), and the range greater than 6.0 as representative of the high seismicity context (Type 1 Spectrum). The magnitude range between 5.5 and 6.0, being a transition between the two previous ranges, was left aside.

Spectral shapes in Eurocode 8 and spectral shape ratios In order to avoid overestimation of spectral ordinates in those areas of Europe affected only by moderate magnitude earthquakes, whilst still only mapping a single ground-motion parameter (peak horizontal ground acceleration, or PGA), the revised version of EC8 has introduced the option of using two spectral shapes. The Type 2 spectrum is for those regions where maximum magnitudes are not expected to exceed M s 5.56.0 (moderate seismicity context). The Type 1 spectrum is for regions where maximum magnitudes are expected to exceed M s 5.56.0 (high seismicity context). The general shapes, independent of the actual amplication factors, have been xed using European strong-motion records grouped according to the new EC8 soil classication scheme, including the four categories listed in Table 1 plus category E, applicable to shallow alluvium underlain by class A or B materials. The site classications for the recording stations have been taken from the sources already quoted under data selection. The spectral shapes were conrmed by rst creating the envelope spectrum for 5% damping from the two horizontal components from each record (nearly all of them had both horizontal components). This means that at every period, the ordinate was the larger

Figure 4. Class B sites, Type 1 Spectrum and average normalised spectrum from 8 European accelerograms.

of the two. Each envelope spectrum was then normalised to the larger of the two values of PGA. The nal shape used was the average of these normalised spectra for each soil class and each type of spectrum (I or II). Figures 27 show examples of how the spec-

Figure 5. Class B sites, Type 2 Spectrum and average normalised spectrum from 24 European accelerograms.

552 the classication. All of these considerations led to the decision to maintain the corner period (TC ) ending the acceleration plateau at 0.25 seconds, although there may be a case to increase TC for Type 2 spectra for the softer soil classes. Currently there is not sufcient data to justify changes for these classes, but it is recommended that the EC8 Committee review these spectra in the future when more high-quality accelerograms from small magnitude earthquakes recorded at soft sites are available. It is evident that the previously calculated coefcients IA and IB , take into account the amplication related to the increase of ordinates of soil spectra with respect to rock spectra, but also a contribution due the change in shape of these spectra when they are constrained to have the same ordinate at zero period. As is well known, average spectra for increasingly softer soils differ from those on rock because the plateau, or signicant spectral band, becomes larger and shifted towards greater periods (see also Figures 27). This introduces a factor that reects only the difference between spectral shapes, and can therefore be called spectral shape ratio (SR). This factor is adequately taken into account in the denition of the spectral shapes of EC8 (CEN, 2001), illustrated together in Figure 8. The gure makes it clear that, even if the three spectra have the same coefcient S (in this case equal to 1), the value of the Spectral Intensity for the soil sites would be greater than for rock. Thus, the coefcients Isoil/Irock previously determined can be represented as the product of the true soil amplication coefcient S by the associated shape ratio as previously dened, or Isoil /Irock = S SR (2)

Figure 6. Class C sites, Type 1 Spectrum and average normalised spectrum from 11 European accelerograms.

Figure 7. Class C sites, Type 2 Spectrum and average normalised spectrum from 10 European accelerograms.

tral shapes were xed from the normalised, average spectra grouped by site classication and earthquake magnitude. The ordinates of the Type 2 spectrum for Class C sites in Figure 7 do not provide a satisfactory t to the average spectrum obtained by enveloping the spectra of 10 accelerograms recorded in 7 earthquakes. The available data for this case was limited: 5 out of the 10 records come from two Italian earthquakes of Ms 5.4 that occurred in 1984, all obtained at distances greater than 30 km. Two of the these records are from the Garigliano site, at 50 km, and their spectra have a dominant period close to 0.5 seconds. In order to employ a larger data set, in which no individual earthquake would be so dominant, other records were used, only one of which came from an earthquake that was strictly within the denition of the Type 2 spectrum of being applicable for magnitudes less than or equal to 5.5. The other four of the records came from two M s 5.6 events and others of M s 5.7 and 5.8. For some of the stations from which records in this group were selected there is an element of uncertainty regarding

Recommendations for Eurocode 8 and conclusions The distance-normalised spectra for the three considered types of ground conditions and for the two broader seismicity contexts of Eurocode 8 have been analysed to determine the ratios Isoil /Irock already discussed, and the S and SR coefcients just dened. The distance-normalised average spectra calculated from the present dataset were then carefully compared with EC 8 spectra (CEN, 2001); the control periods were found to be reasonably consistent for the two sets of spectra, so that it could be assumed that the EC8 spectral shape ratios are also representative of the present dataset spectra.

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Figure 8. Elastic normalised response spectra dened in Eurocode 8 for Type 1 (CEN, 2001). Table 4. Soil coefcients and spectral shape ratios proposed by Eurocode 8 (CEN 2001) for Spectrum Types 1 and 2 Eurocode 8 S SB SC 1.20 1.50 Type 2 SR 1.00 0.99 S 1.10 1.35 Type 1 SR 1.15 1.27

Table 5. Values of soil coefcient S obtained in this study and proposed in Eurocode 8 (CEN, 2001) This study Calculated Recommended SB SB SC SC (Type 1) (Type 2) (Type 1) (Type 2) 1.21 1.34 1.15 1.47 1.20 1.35 1.15 1.50 Eurocode 8 (CEN, 2001) 1.10 1.20 1.35 1.50

Then, the actual soil coefcients S were determined using (2), i.e. dividing the Isoil /Irock ratios by the spectral shape ratios SR of the EC 8 spectra, given in Table 4. The results obtained are shown in Table 5 and can be compared with the current soil factors of Eurocode 8 (CEN, May 2001).

We note that for subsoil class C the S value from this study coincides with the current EC 8 value for Type 2 spectra. This is not so for Type 1, possibly because of non-linear soil response effects: the present value is signicantly lower than that of Eurocode 8. For subsoil class B our results are signicantly higher than those indicated in the current EC 8 update. On the other hand, the S value for subsoil class A remains 1 for both Type 1 and 2 spectra. Simpson (1996) has used essentially the same original European strong-motion dataset to estimate site coefcients in attenuation relations for spectral ordinates. His results cannot be directly compared with those of this study because he did not introduce magnitude range subdivisions for Ms >4 in his work, and the classication of site conditions at the recording stations has been broadly improved in our study. However, if we calculate the average value of site coefcients for soft and stiff soil for periods between 0.1 and 0.5 s in Simpsons attenuation relations, we obtain, for Ms >4, values of SB = 1.36 and SC = 1.37. These values are closely comparable with the weighted average of S coefcients shown in Table 3, which are 1.35 and 1.36 respectively for SB and SC . In conclusion, this study conrms the occurrence of systematic spectral amplication in the case of sedimentary soils with respect to reference rock in a large set of European strong motion data. Such

554 amplication has been quantied through a measure strictly related to the Spectrum Intensity denition of Housner. The values of the soil coefcients indicated in the current version of Eurocode 8 Part 1 (draft May 2001) are shown to be realistic for Category C, Type 2 spectra. However the S values for Subsoil class B need to be signicantly increased both for Type 1 and 2 Spectra.
Ambraseys, N., Simpson, K., and Bommer, J.J., 1996, Prediction of horizontal response spectra in Europe, Earthq. Enging. Struct. Dyn. 25, 371400. Ambraseys, N., Smit, P., Berardi, R., Rinaldis, D., Cotton, F. and Berge, C., 2000, Dissemination of European Strong-Motion Data, CD-ROM collection, European Council, Environment and Climate Programme. Bommer, J.J. and Scott, S.G., 2000, The feasibility of using real accelerograms for seismic design. In: Elnashai, A.S. and Antoniou, S. (eds), Implications of Recent Earthquakes on Seismic Risk, Imperial College Press, pp. 115126. Boore, D.M., Joyner, W.B. and Fumal, T.E., 1993, Estimation of Response Spectra and Peak Accelerations from Western North American Earthquakes: An Interim Report, U.S.G.S. Open-File Report 93509, 72 pp. CEN (Comit Europen de Normalisation), 2001, prEN 1998-1 Eurocode 8: Design of Structures for Earthquake Resistance. Part 1: General rules, seismic actions and rules for buildings. DRAFT No 3, Doc CEN/TC250/SC8/N288, May 2001, Brussels. Faccioli, E., 1992, Selected Aspects of the Characterisation of Seismic Site Effects, Including Some Recent European Contributions. Invited Lecture, Proc. International Symposium on The Effects of Surface Geology on Seismic Motion(ESG1992), Odawara (Japan), March 2527, Vol. 1, pp. 6596. Gazetas, G., Dakoulas, P. and Papageorgiou, A., 1990, Local-soil and source mechanism effects in the 1986 Kalamata (Greece) earthquakes, Earthq. Enging. Struct. Dyn. 19, 431456. Housner, G.W., 1952, Spectrum Intensities of Strong-Motion Earthquakes, Proceeding of the Symposium on Earthquakes and Blast Effects on Structures, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. Marra, F., Azzara, R., Bellucci, F., Caserta, A., Cultrera, G., Mele, G., Palombo, B., Rovelli, A. and Boschi, E., 2000, Large amplication of ground motion at rock sites within a fault zone in Nocera Umbra (central Italy), J. Seismol. 4, 543554. Simpson, K.A., 1996, The Attenuation of Strong Ground-Motion Incorporation Near-Surface Foundation Conditions, Doctoral Thesis, submitted to the Imperial College of the University of London. Talaganov, K., Aleksovski, D. and Gadza, V., 1982, Analysis of the Inuence of Local Soil Conditions Upon Maximum Accelerations Based on Data from the 1979 Montenegro Earthquake, Proc. 7th Europ. Conf. on Earthquake Engineering, Athens, Greece, 2, pp. 423430.

Acknowledgements The authors are deeply grateful to K. Pitilakis for the soil proles at the Greek aceelerograph stations. G. Gazetas kindly provided the data of the Ionianet accelerograph array in Kefalonia island. The authors also wish to acknowledge the contribution of all members of EC8 Project Team PT1, to whose endeavours this study is a central contribution, for stimulating and useful discussions on the issues related to the denition of the ERS.

References
Akkar, S. and Glkan, P., 2000, A Critical Examination of Near Field Accelerograms from the Sea of Marmara Region Earthquakes, Preprint Vol. of Workshop on Earthquakes in Turkey 1999, General Directorate of Highways of Turkey and U. S. Federal Highway Administration, Ankara, Nov. 610. Ambraseys, N. and Bommer, J.J., 1990, Uniform magnitude reevaluation for the strong-motion database of Europe and adjacent areas, Eur. Earthq. Enging. 2, 316. Ambraseys, N. and Free, M., 1997, Surface-wave magnitude calibration for European region earthquakes, J. Earthq. Enging. 1, 122.

555 Appendix List of accelerograph station in European Strong-Motion Database (ESD) for which the VS prole (or other geotechnical characterisation) has been obtained.
Name of the station Aigio-OTE Building Argostoli-OTE Building Bagnoli-Irpino Bar-Skupstina Opstine Benevento Bisaccia Bolu-Bayindirlik ve Iskan Mud. (+) Bovino Breginj-Fabrika IGLI Brienza Buia Calitri Codroipo Duzce-Meteoroloji Mudurlugu (+) Forgaria-Cornino Gebze-Tubitak Marmara (+) Herceg Novi-O.S. D. Pavicic Kalamata-OTE Building Kalamata-Prefecture Kefalonia (EF4) Kefalonia (EF2) Kyparrisia-OTE Building Lefkada-Hospital Lefkada-OTE Building Mercato San Severino Patra-OTE Building Petrovac-Hotel Oliva Rionero in Vulture Robic Sakarya-Bayindirlik Iskan Mud. (+) San Giorgio la Molara San Rocco Sturno Tarcento Thessaloniki-City Hotel Tolmezzo-Diga Ambiesta Ulcinj-Hotel Albatros Ulcinj-Hotel Olimpic Country No. of earthq. recorded 5 1 2 4 1 1 1 1 4 3 5 1 3 2 12 1 2 2 3 3 3 1 3 10 1 6 3 4 2 1 1 6 2 4 2 8 4 6 Original ESD site classication stiff soil stiff soil rock stiff soil stiff soil stiff soil unknown stiff soil stiff soil stiff soil soft soil stiff soil stiff soil unknown stiff soil unknown rock stiff soil stiff soil rock soft soil soft soil soft soil alluvium stiff soil rock rock stiff soil rock soft soil rock soft soil soft soil rock rock stiff soil Revised site classication stiff soil stiff soil rock stiff soil stiff soil stiff soil soft soil stiff soil stiff soil stiff soil soft soil stiff soil stiff soil soft soil stiff soil rock rock soft soil stiff soil rock soft soil rock soft soil soft soil soft soil soft soil stiff soil rock rock stiff soil rock rock rock rock soft soil rock rock stiff soil

Greece Greece Italy Yugoslavia Italy Italy Turkey Italy Slovenia Italy Italy Italy Italy Turkey Italy Turkey Yugoslavia Greece Greece Greece Greece Greece Greece Greece Italy Greece Yugoslavia Italy Slovenia Turkey Italy Italy Italy Italy Greece Italy Yugoslavia Yugoslavia

Data provided by K. Pitilakis (University of Thessaloniki). Soil description and V prole in Talaganov et al., (1982). S Ionianet array station, not included in ESD, data provided by G. Gazetas (National Technical University

of Athens). (+) Only geologic site description available (Akkar and Glkan, 2000).