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

Year 2018, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 46 - 53, 05.07.2018

Hamdullah Livaoğlu , Evrim Yavuz Fadime Sertçelik , Tahir Serkan Irmak , İbrahim Sertçelik , Cengiz Kurtuluş

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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