Synthesis of accelerations of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake ( M S 7.8) in near- and far-field by using semi-empirical method

In this paper a heterogeneous fault model of the Tangshan earthquake is suggested, which consists of two southern sub-faults striking N30°E and two northern sub-faults striking N50°E. Total length of the main shock fault is 114 km and seismic moment is about 1.4 × 10²⁰ N·m. The epicentre of the main shock is located at the southern part, near the intersection of the two bands. Accelerations of two aftershocks (M _L 5.5, M _S 6.9) were used as empirical Green’s functions to synthesize the accelerations of the main shock in near and far field. A method that small events and main shock are considered not satisfying the similarity relationship in the improved empirical Green’s function is also applied in this paper. Peak values, duration and response spectra of synthesized accelerations in far field are in agreement with the observed records. The synthesized results in near field are also in agreement with the epicentral intensity distribution of the main shock. The results show that the peak acceleration of Tangshan earthquake in epicentral region exceeds 1.1 g. It is consistent with the peak accelerations recorded in some large earthquakes occurred in recent years. The research is supported by the National Science Foundation of China.