To Scale or Not to Scale Seismic Ground-Acceleration Records
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 137, Issue 4
Abstract
Current estimates of seismic structural fragilities are commonly made on the basis of finite collections of actual or virtual ground-acceleration records that are scaled to have the same scalar intensity measure, for example, peak ground acceleration or pseudospectral acceleration. This paper models seismic ground-acceleration records by samples of Gaussian processes and constructs scaled versions of by following current procedures. This analysis shows that and have different probability laws, so that fragilities on the basis of provide limited if any information on the seismic performance of structural systems, that is, fragilities on the basis of . The usefulness of current fragility estimates on the basis of scaled seismic ground-acceleration records is questionable, and scaling ground motions is not recommended.
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Acknowledgments
The work reported in this paper has been supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSFCMMI-0925714. This support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 137 • Issue 4 • April 2011
Pages: 284 - 293
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 12, 2010
Accepted: Oct 18, 2010
Published online: Oct 20, 2010
Published in print: Apr 1, 2011
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