Efficient Procedure for Selecting and Scaling Ground Motions for Response History Analysis

Linear and nonlinear response history analyses (RHA) are often conducted for predicting the seismic demand and capacity of structures. The proper selection of ground motions is critical to obtaining reliable results from RHA. The purpose of this study was to develop a computationally efficient and accurate procedure for selecting and scaling ground motions matching a target response spectrum with zero variance, such as a uniform hazard response spectrum, and a design response spectrum that can consider variance in nature. In the proposed procedure, one ground motion at a time is selected and scaled from a ground motion library to make the mean response spectrum of the selected ground motions match a target response spectrum. The process is repeated until a desired number of ground motions is collected. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed procedure is verified by the selection and scaling of seven ground motions from libraries containing 40 and 124 ground motions.