AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco CA, USA, 10-14 December, 2007
Elise Delavaud, Jean-Pierre Vilotte, Gaetano Festa, Paul Cupillard
We present here 3D numerical simulations of the response of the Caracas (Venezuela) valley up to 5 Hz for different scenarios of plane wave excitation based on the regional seismicity. Attention is focused on the effects of the 3D basin geometry and of the adjacent regional topography. The simulations are performed using Spectral Element method (SEM) together with an unstructured hexahedral mesh discretization and perfectly matched layers (PML). These simulations show 3D amplification phenomena associated with complex wave reflexion, diffraction and focalisation patterns linked to the geometry of the basin. Time and frequency analysis reveal some interesting features both in terms of amplification and energy residence in the basin. The low frequency amplification pattern is mainly controlled by the early response of the basin to the incident plane wave while the high frequency amplification patterns result mainly from late arrivals where complex 3D wave diffraction phenomena are dominating and the memory of the initial excitation is lost. Interestingly enough, it is shown that H/V method correctly predict the low frequency amplification pattern when apply to the late part of the recorded seismograms. The complex high frequency amplification pattern is shown to be associated with surface wave generation at, and propagation from, sharp edges of the basin. Importance of 3D phenomena is assessed by comparison with simple 2D simulations. Significant differences in terms of time of residence, energy and amplification levels point out the interest of complete 3D modeling. In conclusions some of the limitations associated with the use of unstructured hexahedral meshes will be adressed. Despite the use of unstructured meshing tool, modeling the geometry of geological basins remain a complex and time consuming task. Possible extensions using more elaborate techniques like non conforming domain decomposition will be also discussed in conclusion.