Evaluation of pulse effect on frequency content of ground motions and definition of a new characteristic period

This study aims at providing a simple and effective methodology to define a meaningful characteristic period for special class of earthquake records named "pulse-like ground motions". In the proposed method, continuous wavelet transform is employed to extract the large pulse of ground motions. Then, Fourier amplitude spectra obtained from the original ground motion and the residual motion is simply compared. This comparison permits to define a threshold pulse-period (Tp∗) as the threshold period above which the pulse component has negligible contributions to the Fourier amplitude spectrum. The effect of pulse on frequency content of motions was discussed on the light of this definition. The advantage and superior features of the new definition were related to the inelastic displacement ratio (IDR) for single-degree-of-freedom systems with period equal to one half of the threshold period. Analyses performed for the proposed period at three ductility levels u=2,4,6 were compared with the results obtained at half of pulse period derived from wavelet analysis, peak-point method and the peak of product of the velocity and the displacement response spectra (Sv x Sd). According to the results, pulse effects on inelastic displacement ratio seem to be more important when $\frac{T_p^*}{T}=2$ (T is the fundamental vibration period of system). The results showed that utilizing of the proposed definition could facilitate an enhanced understanding of pulse-like records features.