Evaluation of the damping modification factor for structures subjected to near-fault ground motions

摘要

The damping modification factor (DMF) has been extensively used in earthquake engineering to describe the variation of structural responses due to varied damping ratios. It is known that DMFs are dependent not only on structural dynamic properties but also on characteristics of ground motions. DMFs regulated in current seismic codes are generally developed based on far-fault ground motions and are inappropriately used in structural design where pulse-like near-fault ground motions are involved. In this paper, statistical investigation of the DMF is performed based on 50 carefully selected pulse-like near-fault ground motions. It is observed that DMFs for pulse-like ground motions exhibit significant dependence on the pulse period T-p in a specific period range. If the period of the structure in response is close to the pulse period, the DMF attains the same level as that derived from far-fault ground motions; as the period of the structure is considerably larger or smaller than the pulse period T-p, the response reduction effect by the increased damping ratio is generally small, except for large earthquakes with long pulse periods, which exhibit significant reduction of response for structures with periods smaller than T-p. Based on the statistical results of DMFs, the empirical formulas for estimating DMFs for displacement, velocity and acceleration spectra are proposed, the effect of structural period, pulse period and damping ratio are considered in the formulas, and the formulas are designed to satisfy the specific reliability requirement in the period range of 0.1 < T/T-p < 1, which is of engineering interest.