Coupling of regional geophysics and local soil-structure models in the EQSIM fault-to-structure earthquake simulation framework
- Univ. of Nevada, Reno, NV (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Univ. of Nevada, Reno, NV (United States)
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Accurate understanding and quantification of the risk to critical infrastructure posed by future large earthquakes continues to be a very challenging problem. Earthquake phenomena are quite complex and traditional approaches to predicting ground motions for future earthquake events have historically been empirically based whereby measured ground motion data from historical earthquakes are homogenized into a common data set and the ground motions for future postulated earthquakes are probabilistically derived based on the historical observations. This procedure has recognized significant limitations, principally due to the fact that earthquake ground motions tend to be dictated by the particular earthquake fault rupture and geologic conditions at a given site and are thus very site-specific. Historical earthquakes recorded at different locations are often only marginally representative. There has been strong and increasing interest in utilizing large-scale, physics-based regional simulations to advance the ability to accurately predict ground motions and associated infrastructure response. However, the computational requirements for simulations at frequencies of engineering interest have proven a major barrier to employing regional scale simulations. In a U.S. Department of Energy Exascale Computing Initiative project, the EQSIM application development is underway to create a framework for fault-to-structure simulations. This framework is being prepared to exploit emerging exascale platforms in order to overcome computational limitations. This article presents the essential methodology and computational workflow employed in EQSIM to couple regional-scale geophysics models with local soil-structure models to achieve a fully integrated, complete fault-to-structure simulation framework. Here, the computational workflow, accuracy and performance of the coupling methodology are illustrated through example fault-to-structure simulations.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; AC05-00OR22725; AC52-07NA27344
- OSTI ID:
- 1828555
- Journal Information:
- International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, Journal Name: International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 36; ISSN 1094-3420
- Publisher:
- SAGECopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English