CE658 Earthquake Engineering June 20, EPOKA University, Tirana, ALBANIA.

Response spectrum analysis and design response spectra

Laidon Zekaj1 1

Department of Civil Engineering, EPOKA University, Albania

ABSTRACT

One of the most important issues of earthquake engineering is to assess the response of structures due
to the ground shaking caused by earthquakes. The most common representation of the seismic action
on structures in different codes is achieved through the response spectrum analysis (RSA). This paper
deals with the explanation of the response spectrum concept, how it is constructed and used in order to
determine the peak responses of the structures directly from the response spectrum. Further, is
discussed in general the response spectrum method of analysis. In order to give a more precise view of
the response spectrum analysis and its application it is presented how this method is implemented by
Eurocode 8 and the main points where one should focus when using RSA.
1. INTRODUCTION

The most useful way of describing the ground shaking during an earthquake for engineering purposes is
the plot of ground acceleration versus time like the one shown in figure 1 below.

Ground acceleration, percent of gravity

Ground acceleration, percent of gravity

Time , sec

Figure 1. Typical earthquake accelerogram

To provide the information shown in figure 1, we need a basic instrument called accelerograph. Such
equipment makes it possible to measure all of the three components of ground shaking during an
earthquake. Since it is impossible to know where the next earthquake will take place and it is not logical
to install these instruments everywhere because of their installation and maintenance cost, it is only
probable to obtain such records only in strong – shaking regions. As we will see in the forthcoming
paragraphs, the accelerograms provide the basis of the response spectrum construction.
2. RESPONSE QUANTITIES AND RESPONSE HISTORY

In structural engineering it is very important and useful to know the deformation of a structure because
the latter is directly related to the internal forces of structural elements such as the bending moment,
shear force and axial force. If we take a look to the equation of motion of a single degree of freedom
system (SDOF) (Equation 1), it is obvious that the displacement of a system depends only on the natural
period nT of the system and its damping ratio. Such thing can be noticed too from the Figure 2 which
implies that a large period results in bigger deformation and in contrast a bigger damping ration results
in a smaller deformation of the structure.

Figure 2. Deformation response of single degree of freedom systems

3. THE NOTION OF RESPONSE SPECTRUM

The concept of the earthquake response spectrum was first introduced in 1932 and has become in now
days a very important concept in earthquake engineering. As Chopra defines in his book "Dynamics of
Structures", a plot of the peak value of a response quantity as a function of the natural vibration period
nT of the system, or a related parameter such as circular frequencynω, is called the response spectrum
for that quantity

To provide the response spectrum we need several plots of SDOF system with constant value of the
damping ratio ζ as shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. Acceleration response spectrum

Depending on the quantity we want to use it is possible to have three kinds of response spectrums:

a. Deformation response spectrum

b. Velocity response spectrum

c. Acceleration response spectrum

4. CONSTRUCTION OF RESPONSE SPECTRUM

For this purpose we will take in consideration the deformation responses of the three SDOF introduced
in Figure 3 above. For all of these SDOF the ground motion is the same and the damping ratio as we can
see is set to 2%. Only the frequency of vibration (in this case represented by the period Tn ) is changed.
Let us focus on the first SDOF with0.5 sec Tn=, the computed peak displacement is U0 = 2.67 inches. The
second system has a period of 1.0 secnT= and the peak displacement is U0 = 5.97 inches, in continuity
the third one shows 2.0 sec Tn = and peak displacement of U0 =7.47 inches. Each of these peak
responses provides one point in the displacement response spectra plot. In order to obtain this plot it is
needed to repeat the process over a range of Tn while keeping fixed the value of damping ratio ζ(for
this case ζ = 2% ). The deformation response spectrum provided by this procedure is shown below in
Figure 4.