| Abstract: | The inelastic seismic response behaviour for a range of simplified single-degree-of-freedom models has been analysed using 180 random phase angle synthetic accelerograms with different frequency contents and different durations and 105 real accelerograms collected from different regions worldwide. Results from the analyses have identified that the frequency content of the excitation can greatly influence the ductility demand ratio due to inelastic amplification effects. Consequently, results derived from intraplate earthquake records (typically of higher frequency content) were generally different to those from interplate records. However, the commonly used El Centro accelerogram has significantly lower ductility demand in the low period range than the average of records with similar elastic response spectral shape. Apart from this, there was little evidence to suggest any inherent differences in the inelastic response behaviour of buildings from intraplate and interplate earthquakes which possessed similar frequency content. Thus, the average ductility demand ratios from future earthquakes in an area can be predicted by interpolation of the results presented in this paper assuming the elastic response spectrum has been defined. Ductility demand ratios derived from the synthetic accelerograms and the real accelerograms with similar frequency content have been shown to be consistent. However, results from synthetic records derived for the idealised code design spectra (such as the Uniform Building Code and the Australian Standard AS1170.4) indicate a significantly higher ductility demand in the long period range. |
