A stochastic approach to site-response component in seismic ground motion coherency model

In order to account for the site-response part of the seismic ground motion coherency for sites of interest, an analytical stochastic methodology is proposed in this paper. By combining the pseudo-excitation method with wave motion finite element simulation techniques, a numerical approach for the computation of the coherency function between observation points is developed firstly. Then the orthogonal expansion method is introduced into this approach to study the effect of the uncertainty in soil properties on the coherency function. Finally some numerical examples are given to show the applicability of the methodology. The computational results demonstrate that the lagged coherency values tend to decrease in the vicinity of the resonant frequencies of the site.