Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 420309, 13 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/420309
Research Article

A Grid-Based Method to Represent the Covariance Structure for Earthquake Ground Motion

Yingmin Li,1 Zheqian Wu,1 and Huiguo Chen1,2

1College of Civil Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, China
2Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering, Logistical Engineering University, Chongqing 401311, China

Received 15 November 2011; Revised 26 February 2012; Accepted 8 March 2012

Academic Editor: Yuri Vladimirovich Mikhlin

Copyright © 2012 Yingmin Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Spatial variation of earthquake ground motion is an important phenomenon that cannot be ignored in the design and safety of strategic structures. However, almost all the procedures for the evaluation of variation assumed that the random field is homogeneous in space. It is obvious that reality does not fully conform to the assumption. How to investigate the inhomogeneous feature of ground motion in space is a challenge for researcher. A body-fitted grid-coordinates-based method is proposed to estimate and describe the local spatial variations for the earthquake ground motion; it need not to make the assumption that the random field of earthquake is homogeneous in space. An analysis of spatial variability of seismic motion in smart-1 array monitored in Lotung, Taiwan demonstrates this methodology.