Refined harmony search for optimal scaling and selection of accelerograms

Time history analyses of structures typically require some accelerograms of strong ground motion expected at the site. They should be scaled, avoiding the average response spectrum, to fall below the target design spectrum given by the employed seismic-code procedure within a given period range. In this paper, a harmony search, as a recently developed meta-heuristic, is utilized and adapted to solve the problem of the optimal selection and scaling of such recorded accelerograms. Treating a number of ground motion records, close agreement between the scaled-average spectra and the design target were achieved, identifying the proposed algorithm as an acceptable and efficient technique to generate a spectrum compatible set of records for further dynamic structural analyses.