6/5/22, 1:28 PM How to Scale Base Shear in ETABS | The Structural World

UBC-97 and ASCE 7 are adopted by most countries in determining such procedure called the Static and
Dynamic Lateral Force Procedure.

There are lots of available structural soft wares that can perform the modal response spectrum analysis of high
rise projects; one of them is through the help of ETABS. The question is how to perform the actual scaling of
base shear using ETABS to match with the static base shear? Well, stick around as this article will guide you
how the scaling is being performed in ETABS using UBC-97.

Did you know that there are two methods or options to scale base shear in ETABS? These two approaches on
5

how to scale the base shear are demonstrated in the succeeding examples.
Shares

How to Scale Base Shear in ETABS

In this article, the author assumed that an ETABS model is already been set up and the necessary seismic
parameters are already been specified. Nevertheless, a video was published on our YouTube channel for further
reference. You can subscribe to our channel for more videos regarding structural modeling techniques and tips.

Save Soil, Save

Learn More
Environment
Save Soil

Scale Factor
The scale factor has units of acceleration which is length/seconds2 and that its value will change as you change
the units in the model. Hence, ETABS assumes that the response spectrum functions are unitless and that the
scale factor converts them into the appropriate units. So the use of a scale factor equal to 9.81 can convert the
response spectrum into acceleration (m/s2).

READ ALSO:   Top 5 Structural Engineering Software That You Should Learn

If you are scaling the response spectrum to match with the static analysis results, you need to input the
computed scale factor and specified it under response spectrum cases in ETABS.  This is to convert the
spectrum into required units and for the base shear to scale it to an appropriate level.

https://www.thestructuralworld.com/2019/05/24/2-methods-on-how-to-scale-base-shear-in-etabs/ 2/8