The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

ARMA models for earthquake ground motions

Chang, Mark K.; Kwiatkowski, Jan W.; Nau, Robert F.; Oliver, Robert M.; Pister, Karl S.

UCB/EERC-79/19, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1979-07, 97 pages (420/C48/1979)

This report contains an analysis of four major California earthquake records using a class of discrete linear time-domain processes commonly referred to as ARMA (autoregressive/moving-average) models. In the report, the order of the appropriate ARMA models has been identified, parameters estimated, and the residuals generated by these models tested. Shown are the connections, similarities, and differences between the traditional continuous models with parameter estimates based on spectral analyses and the discrete models with parameters estimated by various maximum likelihood techniques applied to digitized acceleration data in the time domain. The methodology proposed is suitable for simulating earthquake ground motions in the time domain and appears to be easily adapted to serve as inputs for nonlinear discrete time models of structural motions.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-79-19.pdf (2 MB)