Selection of Natural and Synthetic Accelerograms for Seismic Vulnerability Studies on Reinforced Concrete Frames
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 137, Issue 3
Abstract
The choice of seismic input utilized in the evaluation of structural response is determined by the scope of the analysis, namely, the design of new buildings or damage scenarios on existing buildings. Further, a decision has to be made regarding the intensity measure better able to represent the damage potential of the earthquake. This work reports the results of a large set of nonlinear dynamic analyses on structural types representing reinforced concrete buildings widely present in the Italian and European built environments. Seismic input comes from both natural recordings and synthetic data. The maximum interstory drift has been selected as the response parameter better able to represent the structural and nonstructural damage level. The use of a computer code able to generate spectrum-compatible accelerograms showed that synthetic data provide output that is closer to a natural recording when the accelerograms are not forced to converge to a code response spectrum. The Housner intensity proved to be the more effective intensity measure for selecting the seismic input, providing a monotone and almost linear scaling of output.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 137 • Issue 3 • March 2011
Pages: 367 - 378
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 21, 2008
Accepted: Feb 16, 2010
Published online: Feb 19, 2010
Published in print: Mar 1, 2011
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