Widespread ground motion distribution caused by rupture directivity during the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake

Type Journal Article - Scientific reports
Title Widespread ground motion distribution caused by rupture directivity during the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake
Author(s)
Volume 6
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2016
URL https://www.nature.com/articles/srep28536?WT.ec_id=SREP-20160628&spMailingID=51708757&spUserID=MzcwN​DE0MDA2MjcS1&spJobID=944034420&spReportId=OTQ0MDM0NDIwS0
Abstract
The ground motion and damage caused by the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake can be characterized by their widespread distributions to the east. Evidence from strong ground motions, regional acceleration duration, and teleseismic waveforms indicate that rupture directivity contributed significantly to these distributions. This phenomenon has been thought to occur only if a strike-slip or dip-slip rupture propagates to a site in the along-strike or updip direction, respectively. However, even though the earthquake was a dip-slip faulting event and its source fault strike was nearly eastward, evidence for rupture directivity is found in the eastward direction. Here, we explore the reasons for this apparent inconsistency by performing a joint source inversion of seismic and geodetic datasets, and conducting ground motion simulations. The results indicate that the earthquake occurred on the underthrusting Indian lithosphere, with a low dip angle, and that the fault rupture propagated in the along-strike direction at a velocity just slightly below the S-wave velocity.

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