• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.179-191
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• 2009

This paper is aimed at combining wavelet multiresolution analysis and nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model for the simulation of earthquake accelerograms. The proposed approach decomposes earthquake accelerograms using wavelet multiresolution analysis for the simulation of earthquake accelerograms. This study is on the basis of some Iranian earthquake records, namely Naghan 1977, Tabas 1978, Manjil 1990 and Bam 2003. The obtained results indicate that the simulated records preserve the significant properties of the actual accelerograms. In order to investigate the efficiency of the model, the spectral response curves obtained from the simulated accelerograms have been compared with those from the actual records. The results revealed that there is a good agreement between the response spectra of simulated and actual records.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.957-979
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• 2015

The present paper investigates the influence of the orientation of the ground-motion reference axes, the seismic incident angle and the seismic intensity level on the inelastic response of asymmetric reinforced concrete buildings. A single storey asymmetric building is analyzed by nonlinear dynamic analyses under twenty bi-directional ground motions. The analyses are performed for many angles of incidence and four seismic intensity levels. Moreover three different pairs of the horizontal accelerograms corresponding to the input seismic motion are considered: a) the recorded accelerograms, b) the corresponding uncorrelated accelerograms, and c) the completely correlated accelerograms. The nonlinear response is evaluated by the overall structural damage index. The results of this study demonstrate that the inelastic seismic response depends on the orientation of the ground-motion reference axes, since the three individual pairs of accelerograms corresponding to the same ground motion (recorded, uncorrelated and completely correlated) can cause different structural damage level for the same incident angle. Furthermore, the use of the recorded accelerograms as seismic input does not always lead to the critical case of study. It is also shown that there is not a particular seismic incident angle or range of angles that leads to the maximum values of damage index regardless of the seismic intensity level or the ground-motion reference axes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.45-56
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• 2020

The application of critical excitation method with displacement-based objective function for multi degree of freedom (MDOF) systems is investigated. To this end, a new critical excitation method is developed to find the critical input motion of a MDOF system as a synthetic accelerogram. The upper bound of earthquake input energy per unit mass is considered as a new constraint for the problem, and its advantages are discussed. Considering this constraint, the critical excitation method is then used to generate synthetic accelerograms for MDOF models corresponding to three shear buildings of 10, 16, and 22 stories. In order to demonstrate the reliability of generated accelerograms to estimate dynamic response of the structures, three target ground motions with considerable level of energy contents are selected to represent "real critical excitation" of each model, and the method is used to re-generate these ground motions. Afterwards, linear dynamic analyses are conducted using these accelerograms along with the generated critical excitations, to investigate the key parameters of response including maximum displacement, maximum interstory drift, and maximum absolute acceleration of stories. The results show that the generated critical excitations can make an acceptable estimate of the structural behavior compared to the target ground motions. Therefore, the method can be reliably implemented to generate critical excitation of the structure when real one is not available.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.709-723
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• 2007

Considering the vast usage of time-history dynamic analyses to calculate structural responses and lack of sufficient and suitable earthquake records, generation of artificial accelerograms is very necessary. The main target of this paper is to present a novel method based on nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model and wavelet transform to generate more artificial earthquake records, which are compatible with target spectrum. In this regard, the generalized nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model to include the nonstationary evaluation of amplitude and dominant frequency of ground motion and properties of wavelet transform is used to generate ground acceleration time history. Application of the method for El Centro 1940 earthquake and two Iranian earthquakes (Tabas 1978 and Manjil 1990) is presented. It is shown that the model and identification algorithms are able to accurately capture the nonstationary features of these earthquake accelerograms. The statistical characteristics of the spectral response of the generated accelerograms are compared with those for the actual records to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Also, for comparison of the presented method with other methods, the response spectra of the synthetic accelerograms compared with the models of Fan and Ahmadi (1990) and Rofooei et al. (2001) and it is shown that the response spectra of the synthetic accelerograms with the method of this paper are close to those of actual earthquakes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.153-166
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• 2008

This paper suggests the use of wavelet multiresolution analysis (WMRA) and neural network for generation of artificial earthquake accelerograms from target spectrum. This procedure uses the learning capabilities of radial basis function (RBF) neural network to expand the knowledge of the inverse mapping from response spectrum to earthquake accelerogram. In the first step, WMRA is used to decompose earthquake accelerograms to several levels that each level covers a special range of frequencies, and then for every level a RBF neural network is trained to learn to relate the response spectrum to wavelet coefficients. Finally the generated accelerogram using inverse discrete wavelet transform is obtained. An example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.173-197
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• 2007

A wavelet-based procedure to generate artificial accelerograms compatible with a prescribed seismic design spectrum is described. A procedure to perform a baseline correction of the compatible accelerograms is also described. To examine how the frequency content of the modified records evolves with time, they are analyzed in the time and frequency using the wavelet transform. The changes in the strong motion duration and input energy spectrum are also investigated. An alternative way to match the design spectrum, termed the "two-band matching procedure", is proposed with the objective of preserving the non-stationary characteristics of the original record in the modified accelerogram.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.121-129
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• 2012

All contemporary seismic Codes have adopted smooth design acceleration response spectra, which have derived by statistical analysis of many elastic response spectra of natural accelerograms. The above smooth design spectra are characterized by two main branches, an horizontal branch that is 2.5 times higher than the peak ground acceleration, and a declining parabolic branch. According to Eurocode EN/1998, the period range of the horizontal, flat branch is extended from 0.1 s, for rock soils, up to 0.8 s for softer ones. However, from many natural recorded accelerograms of important earthquakes, the real spectral amplification factor appears to be much higher than 2.5 and this means that the spectrum leads to an unsafe seismic design of the structures. This point is an issue open to question and it is the object of the present study. In the present paper, the spectral amplification factor of the smooth design acceleration spectra is re-calculated on the grounds of a known "reliability index" for a desired probability of exceedance. As a pilot scheme, the seismic area of Greece is chosen, as it is the most seismically hazardous area in Europe. The accelerograms of the 82 most important earthquakes, which have occurred in Greece during the last 38 years, are used. The soil categories are taken into account according to EN/1998. The results that have been concluded from these data are compared with the results obtained from other strong earthquakes reported in the World literature.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.429-437
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• 2023

This paper studied the prediction of structural damage indices to buildings after earthquake occurrence using Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Fuzzy Linear Regression (FLR) methods. Particularly, the structural damage degree, represented by the Maximum Inter Story Drift Ratio (MISDR), is an essential factor that ensures the safety of the building. Thus, the seismic response of a steel building was evaluated, utilizing 65 seismic accelerograms as input signals. Among the several response quantities, the focus is on the MISDR, which expresses the postseismic damage status. Using MLR and FLR methods and comparing the outputs with the corresponding evaluated by nonlinear dynamic analyses, it was concluded that the FLR method had the most accurate prediction results in contrast to the MLR method. A blind prediction applying a set of another 10 artificial accelerograms also examined the model's effectiveness. The results revealed that the use of the FLR method had the smallest average percentage error level for every set of applied accelerograms, and thus it is a suitable modeling tool in earthquake engineering.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.652-659
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• 2005

Even in moderate to low seismic regions like Korean peninsular where wind loading usually governs the structural design of a tall building, the probable structural impact of the design basis earthquake or the maximum credible earthquake on the selected structural system should be considered at least in finalizing the design. In this study, by using response spectrum analysis and linear time history analysis method, seismic performance evaluation was conducted for wind-designed concentrically braced steel highrise buildings. Both spectrum-compatible artificial accelerograms and recorded accelerograms were used as input ground motions for the time history analysis. The analysis results showed that wind-designed concentrically braced steel highrise buildings possess significantly increased elastic seismic capacity due to the system overstrength resulting from the wind-serviceability criterion and the width-to-thickness ratio limits on steel members. Time history analysis results generally tended to underestimate the seismic response as compared to those of response spectrum analysis.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.145-150
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• 1999

In the nonlinear dynamic structural analysis, the given ground excitation as an input should be well defined. Because of the lack of recorded accelerograms in Korea, it is required to generate an artificial earthquake by a stochastic model of ground excitation with various dynamic properties rather than recorded accelerograms. It is well known that earthquake motions are generally non-stationary with time-varying intensity and frequency content. Many researchers have proposed non-stationary random process models. Yeh and Wen (1990) proposed a non-stationary stochastic process model which can be modeled as components with an intensity function, a frequency modulation function and a power spectral density function to describe such non-stationary characteristics. This paper shows the process to generate nonstationary artificial earthquake ground motions considering target design response spectrum chosen by ATC14.