The smooth transition GARCH model for simulation of highly nonstationary earthquake ground motions

The aim of this paper is to extend a stochastic model for simulation of highly nonstationary ground motions (GMs). In this model, the dual-tree complex discrete wavelet transform (DT-CDWT) is applied to a recorded ground motion to extract its wavelet coefficients and then the Smooth Transition Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (ST-GARCH) model is used to simulate these coefficients. This model simulates nonstationary features of real GMs greatly, because the conditional variance estimated by this model changes compatibly with the amplitude nonstationary features of real GMs. Because of having asymmetric structure, this model also estimates sudden changes in the amplitude of ground motions. Some of the special capabilities of this model are the simulation of multiple increasing–decreasing cycles in the temporal amplitude of GMs, prediction of several peaks in the frequency spectrum of GMs, estimation of steps of their energy curve, and simultaneous simulation of all shocks of a GM sequence. Also, this model simulates the time–frequency energy distribution of both wide-frequency and narrow-frequency bandwidth GMs.