ELASTIC AND INELASTIC RESPONSE SPECTRA FOR GROUND MOTION RECORDS FROM THENOVEMBER 22, 1995 GULF OF AQABA EARTHQUAKE-JORDAN

On November 22, 1995 the largest earthquake instrumentally recorded along the Jordan dead sea transform (JDST) in at least a century, with magnitude mw= 7.2, occurred in the Gulf of aAqaba, which forms the Marin extension of the Jordan dead sea transform. The main rupture corresponding to the strike-slip mechanism is located within the Gulf of Aqaba and was preceded by earthquake swarms North and South of its NE-striking rupture, and was followed by about 6 months of intense aftershock activity, concentrated mainly northwest and southeast of the main rupture. The Jordan dead sea transform (JDST) accommodates the strike-slip movement between the African plate and the Arabian plate, extends over a length of 1100 km from the Northern Red Sea to Turkey, and constitutes the major source of seismicity in Jordan (Fig. 1). The Gulf of Aqaba itself is usually described by the succession of the three deep pull-apart basins, elongated in the N-S direction (Fig. 2). This paper examines some of the characteristics of the ground motion recorded during the main shock of the earthquake, and the effects of these records on the elastic and inelastic response spectra of single-degree-of-freedom systems. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]