Experimental evaluation of ground motion scaling methods for nonlinear analysis of structural systems

摘要

This paper describes an experimental investigation on the scaling of ground motion records for use in the nonlinear response history analysis of building structures. The study is based on the measured response from small-scale shake-table experiments of nonlinear multi-story building frame structures under ground motion suites that have been scaled using different methods. Four structural configurations with different fundamental periods and lateral strengths are investigated to assess the effectiveness of the scaling methods in reducing the dispersion in the seismic lateral displacement demands of the structures from a total of 720 shake-table tests. Four scaling methods are examined including three methods that depend on a priori knowledge of the properties of the structure being analyzed as well as a method based solely on the properties of the ground motions. The experimental results show that the method based solely on the properties of the ground motions generally produced demand results with less dispersion than the other evaluated scaling methods. However, the methods that rely on prior knowledge of the structure performed better at preserving the benchmark median demands for several of the cases considered.