Author(s)

A. Faroughi & M. Hosseini

Abstract

In seismic design and evaluation of irregular buildings most codes recommend nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA), which is very time-consuming, mainly since the time step size of the digitized accelerograms is usually very small. Therefore, if the NLTHA analysis can be performed by large time steps without losing much precision, it can be very helpful. This paper introduces a method for simplification of accelerograms based on the modification of their Fourier analyses. In the proposed method the Fourier Spectrum of the accelerogram is calculated first, and then, by using a computer program, developed by the authors, the corresponding Inverse Fourier Transform is calculated using a relatively large time step, depending on the structure’s periods, which is usually 5 to 10 times of the original accelerogram’s time step) to create the simplified accelerogram. Obviously, time history analysis by using this simplified accelerogram is much less time-consuming. Numerical results show that the maximum response values obtained by using the simplified accelerograms have only 5 to 10 percent error, depending on the type of the structure and the features of the used records. Keywords: Fourier and Inverse Fourier Transforms, time step size.

Keywords

Fourier and Inverse Fourier Transforms, time step size