The Challenge of Defining Upper Bounds on Earthquake Ground Motions

Abstract
In the period between the recording of the first strong-motion accelerograms in the Long Beach earthquake of March 1933 and the end of the 1960's, a number of studies were published proposing possible upper limits on earthquake ground-motion amplitudes. Some studies were purely empirical and influenced to a large extent by the El Centro recording of the 1940 Imperial Valley earthquake: Housner (1965) proposed that peak ground acceleration (PGA) would not exceed 0.5 g; Newmark (1965) proposed a limit in the range 0.5-0.6 g on PGA and between 76 and 91 cm/s on peak ground velocity (PGV), and Newmark and Hall (1969) proposed a limit of 0.75 g on PGA and agreed with 91 cm/s …
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