A Nonlinear Site-Amplification Model for the Next Pan-European Ground-Motion Prediction Equations

A site-amplification model for shallow crustal regions that considers both linear and nonlinear soil effects is proposed. The original functional form of the model was developed by Walling et al. (2008) (WAS08) using stochastic simulations and site-response analysis. The major difference between the proposed model and WAS08 is that our site-amplification expression is entirely based on empirical data. To comply with this objective, a database with the most recent V-S30 information from the pan-European region has been compiled. This feature of the model encourages its use for the future ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) that will be devised particularly for this region. Worldwide accelerograms are also considered to have a better representation of the soil behavior under strong-motion excitations. As an auxiliary tool a GMPE for reference-rock sites is also developed to calculate the site-amplification factors. The coefficients of the site-amplification model as well as the reference-rock model are computed by applying the random-effects regression technique proposed by Abrahamson and Youngs (1992). Preliminary results of this article suggest a more comprehensive study for the revision of site factors in Eurocode 8 (European Committee for Standardization [CEN], 2004)