Digital simulation of multivariate earthquake ground motions

In this paper a new generation procedure of multivariate earthquake ground motion is presented. The technique takes full advantage of the decompositio n of the power spectral density matrix by means of its eigenvectors. The ap plication of the method to multivariate ground accelerations shows some ver y interesting physical properties which allows one to obtain significant re duction of the computational effort in the generation of sample functions r elative to multivariate earthquake ground motion processes. Copyright (C) 2 000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.