Seismic Characterization of the Blast Occured In Istanbul (Turkey) by the end of 2016

Abstract

On December 10, 2016; two terror originated attacks hit Istanbul, Besiktas at sequential time intervals of 45 seconds shaking the buildings, damaged surrounding structures and caused loss of lives. The first blast was hit with a bomb loaded vehicle under sail in the eastern exit of the Vodafone Park stadium. The second attack was occurred after 45 seconds in the western exit of the stadium. These blasts produced seismic signals which were recorded by two broadband instruments ISK and KAVV that are operated by Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute Regional Earthquake-Tsunami Monitoring Center (KOERI-RETMC). These explosions were audible up to several kilometers including significant acoustic energy at frequencies higher than 20 Hz. The blasts were analyzed in frequency and time domain to illustrate the attack’s frequency characteristics and its amplitudes. The first attack’s (car loaded) record in station KAVV's N-S component shows the fundamental peak frequency in 17 Hz at 0.2^th second, 12 Hz at station ISK respectively depicting single massive event and energy discharge as well. For the second attack which was a suicide bomber, the results of Short Time Fourier Transform analysis indicate that the energy releases focused both at higher frequencies and involving infrasound at < 20 Hz. Due to amount of bomb, the second blast corresponds to energy discharge at low amplitudes in comparison with the first blast. In addition to that it was detected from the energy estimation that the explosion for the first attack is equivalent to 225.6 kg TNT.

Keywords

• blasts,Istanbul,spectra,time-frequency domain analysis,Turkey

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