Numerical Simulations of 1461 and 1762 San Pio delle Camere (L’Aquila) Earthquakes Using 3D Physic-Based Model

The aim of this paper is to propose a physics-based simulation of the two earthquakes that hit the surrounding area of the city of L’Aquila (Abruzzo central Italy) in 1461 and 1762, with magnitudes 6.4 Mw and 6.0 Mw, respectively. Both events are placed, by the available literature, on the fault structure named San Pio delle Camere [11]. The physical parameters characterizing the earthquake such as fault plane, epicenter, and magnitude are considered to be fixed. Starting from them three stochastic rupture scenarios are generated from each earthquake using three different slip distributions. The scenarios were evaluated in relation to the possibility to reproduce the macroseismic intensity field available from the historical catalogs. The simulated values of peak velocity are used to derive the value of the macrosiesmic intensity obtained by a suitable empirical relationship specifically derived for Italy. For the numerical simulations we used a three-dimensional soil model used and validated in a previous study related to the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. The considered slip distributions are able to reproduce quite well the macroseismic effect of the 1461 earthquake. While none of the three scenarios developed satisfactorily reproduce the 1762 earthquake. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.