An effective procedure for seismic hazard analysis including nonlinear soil response

This paper presents probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) of Tehran, Iran, accounting the effect of nonlinear soil response. It is well-known that soil nonlinearity and its accurate prediction could play important role in seismic hazard study. For this purpose, two different approaches have been carried out for predicting the hazard curves by (1) applying site modifications to the ground motion prediction equation based on generic site classes and use of constant coefficients (2) using a close-form solution that modifies the hazard results at the rock level. Also, efficiency of the Monte Carlo method in modeling of amplification function for the six selected sites in the study area was examined. Results showed important effect of nonlinear soil response mainly for frequencies lower than 8 Hz, which should be considered properly in hazard estimation. As an interesting subject, influence of soil plasticity index (PI) on hazard estimation of clayey sites including the nonlinear soil response was evaluated. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012