Long period seismic ground motions for isolation systems

In this paper numerical simulations of long period strong ground motions are calculated based on theoretical seismological models of the seismic source and wave propagation. The method includes both near-field and far-field terms and surface waves as well as body waves which allows valid simulations at both short and large distances. Long period ground motions for magnitude 6.75 and magnitude 8.0 events are computed at distances of 3 to 30 km. The resulting response spectral displacements are compared to the SEAOC 1990 spectrum for base-isolated system. At a period of 2 seconds, the SEAOC spectrum is close to the spectrum for a magnitude 8.0 earthquake. However, at a period of 5 seconds, the SEAOC spectrum is much larger than the simulated notions even for a magnitude 8 event