Effects of near-fault ground motions and equivalent pulses on multi-story structures

Abstract The focus of this paper is the structural response of multi-story structures to near-fault ground motions, and whether structural response is dominated by the ground motion pulses present in forward-directivity ground motions. Also considered is whether simplified pulses are capable of representing the effects of these pulses on structural response. Incremental Dynamic Analysis was employed to assess the effects of forward-directivity pulses on the response of near-fault multi-story structures. Three different generic multi-story shear buildings were subjected to fifty four near-fault ground motions including ordinary and forward-directivity records. The Maximum Story Displacement Ductility Demand was selected as the Engineering Demand Parameter. Results showed that pulse-like forward-directivity ground motions impose a larger ductility demand to the structure compared to ordinary ground motions. Moreover, the response of the structures to forward-directivity motions shows higher scatter than the response to ordinary ground motions when correlated with simple intensity measures such as PGA or spectral acceleration at the first mode period. The only intensity measure that appears to be valid for both ordinary and forward-directivity ground motions is the peak ground velocity. The structural response to the forward directivity ground motions was reproduced using an equivalent pulse model based on the modified Gabor Wavelet pulse. It is shown that when the ratio of pulse period to the fundamental structural period falls in a range of 0.5–2.5, the equivalent pulse model appropriately represents the structural response to forward-directivity ground motions. The simplified pulse parameters can be predicted using existing relationships and can be incorporated into probabilistic seismic hazard analysis to develop a seismic reliability analysis. Finally, the effects of damping ratio and P - Δ were investigated for forward-directivity ground motions. The effect of variations in the damping ratio on the ductility demand was insignificant while P - Δ -effects on the ductility demand are significant.