Directivity effects for moderate-magnitude earthquakes (Mw 5.6–6.0) during the 1997 Umbria–Marche sequence, central Italy

The Colfiorito Mw 6.0 (September 26, 1997, 09:40 UTC) and the Sellano Mw 5.6 (October 14, 1997) normal-faulting earthquakes are the two strongest events of the 1997–1998 Umbria–Marche seismic sequence (central Italy). They provided accelerograms recorded at epicentral distances within nearly two fault lengths. Previous studies on these events revealed clear evidence of unilateral rupture propagation and directivity effects on the source time functions. We developed an approximate procedure to correct the observed peak ground motion for the site effects, and we found a systematic increase of peak ground acceleration (PGA) and peak ground velocity (PGV) at sites located in the direction of the rupture propagation respect to the stations located to the backward. In particular we showed that, for the Colfiorito earthquake, the average PGV at the north-west sites is 2.8 times larger than the PGV at south-east sites (2.1 for PGA); an opposite behaviour is found during the Sellano earthquake, with an amplification factor of about 1.9 for PGV (1.5 for PGA) recorded at south-east sites respect to the north-west stations. We explained these behaviours in terms of directivity effect, by comparing recorded ground accelerations with synthetics simulated by a deterministic–stochastic technique. This method computes high-frequency ground motions (f > 0.5 Hz) from extended faults, generalizing the point-source stochastic method to capture the essence of near-source effects. The synthetic PGAs decrease with distance in agreement with the ground-motion empirical predictive model available for the area and describe the azimuthal variation of recorded data in terms of source effects.