Seismic Response of Base-Isolated Structures underMulti-component Ground Motion Excitation

An analysis of a base-isolated structure for multi-component random ground motion is presented. The mean square respond of the system is Obtained under different parametric variations. The effectiveness of main parameters and the torsional component during an earthquake is quantified with the help of the response ratio and the root mean square response with and without base isolation. It is observed that the base isolation has considerable influence on the response and the effect of the torsional component is not ignored.

Influence of earthquake ground motion incoherency on multi-support structures

A linear response history analysis method is used to determine the influence of three factors:geometric incoherency,wave-passage,and local site characteristics on the response of lnulti-support structures subjected to differential ground motions.A one-span frame and a reduced model of a 24-span bridge,located in Las Vegas,Nevada are studied,in which the influence of each of the three factors and their combinations are analyzed.It is revealed that the incoherency of earthquake ground motion can have a dramatic influence on structural response by modifying the dynamics response to uniform excitation and inducing pseudo-static response,which does not exist in structures subjected to uniform excitation.The total response when all three sources of ground motion incoherency are included is generally larger than that of uniform excitation.

Peak earthquake response of structures under multi-component excitations

Accurate estimation of the peak seismic responses of structures is important in earthquake resistant design. The internal force distributions and the seismic responses of structures are quite complex, since ground motions are multidirectional. One key issue is the uncertainty of the incident angle between the directions of ground motion and the reference axes of the structure. Different assumed seismic incidences can result in different peak values within the scope of design spectrum analysis for a given structure and earthquake ground motion record combination. Using time history analysis to determine the maximum structural responses excited by a given earthquake record requires repetitive calculations to determine the critical incident angle. This paper presents a transformation approach for relatively accurate and rapid determination of the maximum peak responses of a linear structure subjected to three-dimensional excitations within all possible seismic incident angles. The responses can be deformations, internal forces, strains and so on. An irregular building structure model is established using SAP2000 program. Several typical earthquake records and an artificial white noise are applied to the structure model to illustrate the variation of the maximum structural responses for different incident angles. Numerical results show that for many structural parameters, the variation can be greater than 100%. This method can be directly applied to time history analysis of structures using existing computer software to determine the peak responses without carrying out the analyses for all possible incident angles. It can also be used to verify and/or modify aseismic designs by using response spectrum analysis.

A modified method for simulating non-stationary multi-point earthquake ground motion

A spectral-representation-based algorithm is proposed to simulate non-stationary and stochastic processes with evolutionary power,according to a prescribed non-stationary cross-spectral density matrix. Non-stationary multi-point seismic ground motions at different locations on the ground surface are generated for use in engineering applications. First,a modified iterative procedure is used to generate uniformly modulated non-stationary ground motion time histories which are compatible with the prescribed power spectrum. Then,ground motion time histories are modeled as a non-stationary stochastic process with amplitude and frequency modulation. The characteristic frequency and damping ratio of the Clough-Penzien acceleration spectrum are considered as a function of time in order to study the frequency time variation. Finally,two numerical examples are presented to validate the efficiency of the proposed method,and the results show that this method can be effectively applied to the dynamic seismic analysis of long and large scale structures.

On time-step in structural seismic response analysis under ground displacement/acceleration

There are two models in use today to analyze structural responses when subjected to earthquake ground motions, the Displacement Input Model （DIM） and the Acceleration Input Model （AIM）. The time steps used in direct integration methods for these models are analyzed to examine the suitability of DIM. Numerical results are presented and show that the time-step for DIM is about the same as for AIM, and achieves the same accuracy. This is contrary to previous research that reported that there are several sources of numerical errors associated with the direct application of earthquake displacement loading, and a very small time step is required to define the displacement record and to integrate the dynamic equilibrium equation. It is shown in this paper that DIM is as accurate and suitable as, if not more than, AIM for analyzing the response of a structure to uniformly distributed and spatially varying ground motions.

Generation of endurance time excitation functions using spectral representation method

In this study,application of the spectral representation method for generation of endurance time excitation functions is introduced.Using this method,the intensifying acceleration time series is generated so that its acceleration response spectrum in any desired time duration is compatible with a time-scaled predefined acceleration response spectrum.For this purpose,simulated stationary acceleration time series is multiplied by the time dependent linear modulation function,then using a simple iterative scheme,it is forced to match a target acceleration response spectrum.It is shown that the generated samples have excellent conformity in low frequency,which is useful for nonlinear endurance time analysis.In the second part of this study,it is shown that this procedure can be extended to generate a set of spatially correlated endurance time excitation functions.This makes it possible to assess the performance of long structures under multi-support seismic excitation using endurance time analysis.