SCEC’s multi-disciplinary research team is using NCSA Blue Waters to develop physics-based computational models of earthquake processes. During the past year, we integrated more realistic physics into our computational software to model frequency dependent attenuation, small-scale heterogeneities, free-surface topography, and non-linear yielding effects, all of which become increasingly important when simulating high frequency ground motions. We then evaluated these changes by using Blue Waters to perform deterministic ground motion simulations to frequencies of 2Hz and above. We also studied the impact different crustal velocity models, and different attenuation relationships, by simulating multiple well-observed earthquakes up to 1 Hz. We validated our simulations against observed ground motions, and then used our improved computational models to produce the first site-specific 1Hz physics-based probabilistic seismic hazard estimates. These results prepare our SCEC team to calculate the first 1Hz physic-based Los Angeles region seismic hazard model later in 2015.
