Energy-based response of simple structural systems by using simulated ground motions

For the last two decades, there has been a growing and remarkable attention on the energy-based design and assessment approaches for structural systems. These approaches have also been implemented to some of the national seismic design codes as alternative methods in addition to the traditional force-based design methodology. The underlying research has been often carried out by using actual ground motion records taken from many different earthquakes all over the world. However, such an attempt impairs the validity of the obtained results since it is generally not possible to construct a homogeneous ground motion record database with well-distributed source and ground motion parameters. In this study, in order to overcome the aforementioned disadvantage, a large set of simulated ground motion records are used in a parametric study to examine the influence of different intensity measures on the energy-based response of simple structural systems, i.e. single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems. A set of ground motions is formed from simulation of potential events with a certain moment magnitude range, source-to-site distances and soil conditions. The simulations are performed on active faults around Erzincan city center located on the Eastern sections of North Anatolian Fault zone in Turkey. The output parameters are input energy, hysteretic energy and damping energy. The results show that the energy is a relatively stable parameter when compared to other response parameters. Hence energy seems to be a good candidate to be used in seismic design and assessment approaches.