STRONG GROUND MOTION FROM THE NOVEMBER 12, 2017 MW 7.3 SARPOL-E ZAHAB EARTHQUAKE: ANALYSIS OF SOURCE AND SITE CONDITION

On November 12, 2017 at 18:18:16 UTC, a strong earthquake with seismic waves felt to a distance of 2000 km caused extensive damage in the western part of Iran. The Iranian Seismological Center reported this event with a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.3 and depth of 18.1 km with epicentre close to the Iran-Iraq border. This large earthquake devastated cities within the epicentral area with the most damage reported from the cities of Sarpol-e Zahab and Qasr-e Shirin (Zare et al., 2017). The epicentral area of the Mw 7.3 earthquake lies within the Zagros Fold and Thrust Belt between the High Zagros Fault and the Zagros Mountain Front Fault. Near-field ground motion, moment tensor solution, finite fault inversion, and geological and geodetic source models indicated that the Mw 7.3 earthquake occurred on a blind reverse fault striking northwest-southeast with a relatively large right-lateral component and dipping shallowly northeast (Babaie Mahani and Kazemian, 2018; Utkucu, 2018; Tavani et al., 2018; Kuang et al., 2019).

Keywords:

Strong ground motion , Sarpol-e Zahab earthquake , Directivity , Amplification , Non-linearity