Scattering of Seismic Waves : Applications to the Mexico City Valley (Advances in Earthquake Engineering)

This book deals with the application of boundary element technology to the study of scattering from alluvial valleys and topographic structures. It contains some numerical refinements that allow practical computation of two- and three-dimensional studies. Results with this technique are compared to solutions available in the literature and it has proved to be accurate and efficient. Results obtained with data yielded by the Mexico City network during recent earthquakes is used to compare the measured seismic amplification to the results given by the boundary element method. It indeed shows that most of the soil deposits in the city behave as the one-dimensional theory predicts but there are some localized sites where two- or three-dimensional effects are seen in the seismic data and reproduced by the boundary element modelling.