Probabilistic Critical Excitation Method for Earthquake Energy Input Rate

Abstract

Since earthquake ground motions and their input effects on structures are very uncertain even with the present state of knowledge, it is desirable to develop a “robust” structural design method taking into account these uncertainties. Approaches based on critical excitation methods have been proven to be promising for such robust structural design. A new critical excitation method is developed here in which the mean earthquake energy input rate is chosen as a measure of criticality. The earthquake energy input rate is closely correlated with the story deformation and this supports the suitability of the energy input rate as a criticality measure in the case where the deformation is crucial in the design. The ground motion is described as a uniformly modulated nonstationary random process. The power [area of power spectral density (PSD) function] and the intensity (magnitude of PSD function) are fixed and the critical excitation is found under these restrictions. The key for finding the new random critical excitation is the interchange of the order of the double maximization procedures with respect to time and to the PSD function. Examples for a specific envelope function of the ground motion are presented for demonstrating the validity of the proposed method. Extension of the proposed method will be discussed for a more general ground motion model, i.e., nonuniformly modulated nonstationary models, and for a more general problem for variable envelope functions and variable frequency contents.