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.

Performance-based global reliability assessment of a high-rise frame-core tube structure subjected to multi-dimensional stochastic earthquakes

When evaluating the seismic safety and reliability of complex engineering structures,it is a critical problem to reasonably consider the randomness and multi-dimensional nature of ground motions.To this end,a proposed modeling strategy of multi-dimensional stochastic earthquakes is addressed in this study.This improved seismic model has several merits that enable it to better provide seismic analyses of structures.Specifically,at first,the ground motion model is compatible with the design response spectrum.Secondly,the evolutionary power spectrum involved in the model and the design response spectrum are constructed accordingly with sufficient consideration of the correlation between different seismic components.Thirdly,the random function-based dimension-reduction representation is applied,by which seismic modeling is established,with three elementary random variables.Numerical simulations of multi-dimensional stochastic ground motions in a specific design scenario indicate the effectiveness of the proposed modeling strategy.Moreover,the multi-dimensional seismic response and the global reliability of a high-rise frame-core tube structure is discussed in detail to further illustrate the engineering applicability of the proposed method.The analytical investigations demonstrate that the suggested stochastic model of multi-dimensional ground motion is available for accurate seismic response analysis and dynamic reliability assessment of complex engineering structures for performance-based seismic resistance design.

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.