Tectonic hazards/Earthquake simulation

Earthquake simulation is a vibrational input that possesses essential features of a real seismic event. The very first earthquake simulations were performed by statically applying some horizontal inertia forces, based on scaled peak ground accelerations, to a mathematical model of a building. With the further development of computational technologies, static approaches began to give way to dynamic ones.

Dynamic experiments on building and non-building structures may be physical, like shake-table testing, or virtual, or hybrid ones. In all cases, to verify a structure's expected seismic performance, researchers prefer to deal with so called “real time-histories” though the last cannot be “real” for a hypothetical earthquake specified by either a building or by some particular research requirements.

Therefore, there is a strong incentive to engage an earthquake simulation, like, e.g., the earthquake simulating displacement time-history Cone presented on the left.

Earthquake simulations have been widely used in the research supported by The George E. Brown Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES).

Sometimes, earthquake simulation is understood as a re-creation of local effects of a strong ground shaking.