SUMMARY
The special interest produced by near‐field directivity records and their effect on structural response has given a new significance in the velocity time history, its pulse‐like content, and relevant parameters and indices. Recent research has shown that directivity pulses inherent in these records govern the linear and the nonlinear response of a wide range of structures. Based on this observation, it is suggested in this paper that a truncated ground motion, limited to the duration of the predominant velocity pulse, can be efficiently used to predict the structural response, instead of the base motion with the total duration, reducing significantly the required runtimes. The proposed methodology is verified for a series of medium to high rise reinforced concrete buildings, for which nonlinear time‐history analyses are performed for a vast suite of pulse‐like near‐field records applied as base excitations with their total duration and the proposed truncated one. Comparison of the results for the response displacements and forces shows very good agreement, permitting the acceptance of the pulse duration as the efficient strong motion time interval of the original record, which determines the response and, thus, it can be used for nonlinear structural analyses.
The seismic performance assessment of structures using truncated pulse-like ground motion records is discussed. It is shown that it is possible to truncate pulse-like signals using a novel wavelet-based definition that identifies the duration of the predominant velocity pulse. The truncated time history can efficiently reproduce the increased seismic demand that near-field records typically produce. Substituting the original ground motion with the truncated signal, significantly accelerates structural analysis and design. The truncated signal is the part of the original accelerogram that coincides with the duration of the predominant pulse, which is identified using a wavelet-based procedure, previously proposed by the authors. Elastic and inelastic response spectra and nonlinear time history analyses for SDOF (single-degree-of-freedom) systems are first studied. Subsequently a nine-storey steel frame is examined in order to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach on a multiple-degree-of-freedom system. The proposed approach is found very efficient for pulse-like ground motions, while it is also sufficient for many records that are not characterized as such.
The paper shows, that especially for pulse-like ground motions, it is possible to truncate pulselike signals using a novel wavelet-based definition that identifies the duration of the predominant velocity pulse. The truncated time history can efficiently reproduce the increased seismic demand that near-field records typically produce. Substituting the original ground motion with the truncated signal, significantly accelerates structural analysis and design. The truncated signal is the part of the original accelerogram that coincides with the duration of the predominant pulse, which is identified using a wavelet-based procedure, previously proposed by the authors.
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