particle motion: A combined tool for waveform visualization and particle motion analysis

Last updated: 2025-11-29

Introduction

Particle motion analysis examines the three-dimensional trajectories of ground motion recorded at a station, helping to distinguish wave types (P, S, and surface waves), infer propagation direction and polarization, and reveal scattering or site effects; these insights improve phase picking, source mechanism interpretation, and separation of overlapping phases, making particle motion a crucial tool for accurate event characterization and waveform-based analyses.

Two tools are developed for particle motion analysis:

Interactive visualization tool

../../../_images/3D-motion.png — Example illustrating how interactive 3D particle motion visualization works. The window span is adjustable, and users can rotate the 3D plot to view the particle motion from different angles.

Static plot tool

../../../_images/particle_motion.png — Example of static particle motion plot.

After the interactive analysis to obtain features of particle motion, straightforward static plots are needed for documentation purpose. The static plot tool generates publication-quality figures, including 3-component waveforms and XY, XZ, YZ particle motion plots for up to three time windows for P and S waveforms, respectively.

Download the source code and example here