Unscented Kalman filter for time varying spectral analysis of earthquake ground motions

A novel parametric time-domain method for time varying spectral analysis of earthquake ground motions is presented. Based upon time varying autoregressive moving average (ARMA) modeling of earthquake ground motion, unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is used to estimate the time varying ARMA coefficients. Then, time varying spectrum is yielded according to the time varying ARMA coefficients. Analysis of the ground motion record El Centro (1940, N–S) shows that compared to Kalman filter (KF) based method, short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and wavelet transform (WT), UKF based method can more reasonably represent the distribution of the seismic energy in time–frequency plane, which ensures its better ability to track the local properties of earthquake ground motions and to identify the systems with nonlinearity. Analysis of the seismic response of a building during the 1994 Northridge earthquake shows that UKF based method can be potentially a useful tool for structural damage detection and health monitoring. Lastly, it is found that the theoretical frequency resolving power of ARMA models usually neglected in some studies has considerable effect on time varying spectrum and it is one of the key factors for ARMA modeling of earthquake ground motion.