Temporal and spectral characteristics of seismic ground motions: Offshore versus onshore

To distinguish offshore and onshore seismic ground motions, conventional analyses in terms of peak ground acceleration (PGA) and earthquake response spectrum (ERS) have been carried out in a recent work by authors and other papers in literature. In the present study, distinct temporal and spectral characteristics between onshore and offshore earthquake ground motions are further investigated in time-domain and frequency-domain. The data used is 69 pairs of concurrent onshore and offshore ground motions collected from the Kyoshin Network (K-NET). Each pair of data are of approximately identical epicenter distances. Comparisons are made on zero-up-crossing period (Tz), peak-to-trough acceleration range (Apt) and period (Tpt), duration of ground motion (Td), predominant frequency (fp) and the spectral bandwidth parameter (ε). The results indicate that for offshore horizontal and vertical seismic signals, statistics of Tz, Tpt, Td and predominant period Tp tend to be larger than the onshore counterparts. Meanwhile, ε of the offshore vertical ground motions is also greater. Through the proposed energy ratio (ER) analysis, the spectral energy of offshore ground motion is found to shift to moderate and low frequency bands. The time-frequency analysis conducted by Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) shows that the Hilbert spectra of offshore accelerations contain larger spectral energy than the onshore counterpart but the corresponding instantaneous frequencies at peak energy are smaller, especially for horizontal recordings. Therefore, larger dynamic response of offshore structures is prone to be induced by the offshore ground excitation. This is further validated through the dynamic analysis of a marine pipeline in case study.