The Mexico Earthquake of September 19, 1985—A Theoretical Investigation of Large- and Small-scale Amplification Effects in the Mexico City Valley

The linear, large-scale and small-scale amplification effects in the Mexico City valley, related to both the surficial clay layer and the underlying thick sediments, are investigated with two-dimensional (2D) models and compared with the results of simple one-dimensional (1D) models. The deep sediments are shown to be responsible, on their own, for an amplification ranging between 3 and 7, a part of which is due to the 2D effects in case of low damping and velocity gradient. This result is consistent with the observed relative amplification around 0.5 Hz at CU stations with respect to TACY station. The amplification due to the clay layer is much larger (above 10), and the corresponding 2D effects have very peculiar characteristics. On the one hand, the local surface waves generated on any lateral heterogeneity exhibit a strong spatial decay, even in case of low damping (2%), and the motion at a given site is therefore affected only by lateral heterogeneities lying within a radius smaller than 1 km. On the other hand, these local 2D effects may be extremely large, either on the very edges of the lake-bed zone, or over localized thicker areas, where they induce a duration increase and an overamplification. The main engineering consequences of these results are twofold: i) microzoning studies in Mexico City should take into account the effects of deep sediments, and ii) as the surface motion in the lake-bed zone is extremely sensitive to local heterogeneities, 1D models are probably inappropriate in many parts of Mexico City.