Abstract: | The ground motions produced by an earthquake at the multiple support points of large structures can differ considerably. In this study, the quasi-static, the dynamic and the total structural responses of a multiply supported rigid plate to spatially varying multiple ground motion inputs are analysed. The results, together with those obtained by neglecting ground motion phase shifts and those by neglecting ground motion coherency losses, are compared with the corresponding structural responses to a single input. The comparisons show that the single input method overestimates translational responses and underestimates rotational responses. They also show that the responses are sometimes overestimated and sometimes underestimated by neglecting the coherency loss effects between the multiple ground motion excitations. |