Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Effects of early-arriving pulse-like ground motions on seismic demands in

RC frame structures
Cuihua Li a, Sashi Kunnath b, *, Zhanxuan Zuo c, Weibing Peng a, **, Changhai Zhai d
a
College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, China
b
University of California Davis, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Davis, CA, 95616, USA
c
Key Laboratory of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Vibration, Institute of Engineering Mechanics, China Earthquake Administration, Harbin, 150080, China
d
Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Forward-directivity effects cause most of the seismic energy from the rupture to arrive at the beginning of the
Early-arriving pulse-like ground motions motion as a large pulse. This characteristic of ‘early-arriving’ pulses is often adopted to identify pulse-like mo­
Directivity-induced pulse-like ground motions tions caused specifically by directivity effects. However, not all early-arriving pulses are caused by the forward-
RC frame structures
directivity effects. Also, current criteria to select near-source directivity pulses mainly include the presence of
Story ductility
Ground motion intensity
large pulses in the velocity time series, whether the velocity pulse is early-arriving or located within 20 or 30 km
closest distance to the fault. This study is intended to provide important insights into the differences in the
response attributes of reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures subjected to early-arriving pulse-like ground
motions caused by different physical processes, i.e., forward-directivity versus non-directivity effects. Nonlinear
time-history analyses of three generic RC frame structures to two extensive suites of unscaled and scaled ground
motions were performed to examine the distinct effects of these two types of ground motions. Results indicate
that for the short period (2-story) frame, the mean drift demands by directivity motions are equal to or smaller
than that caused by non-directivity motions. For the medium (6-story) and long period (20-story) frames, the
directivity-induced motions result in larger demands in the lower half of the structures compared to non-
directivity motions, especially for high-intensity ground motions. Spectral analyses of the ground motions pro­
vide key information as to why the non-directivity records cause larger demands in the 2-story frame. Simula­
tions using pulse models that represent pulse-like ground motions are carried out to gain additional
understanding on the primary findings for the 6-story and 20-story structures.

1. Introduction All ground motions identified by these algorithms have significant

Near-fault pulse-like ground motions are often caused by forward-
directivity effects [1–3], which occurs when the fault rupture propa­
gates toward the site at a velocity slightly less than or equal to the ve­
locity of the shear waves and the direction of fault slip is aligned with the
site. These ground motions are of interest to seismologists and structural
earthquake engineers because they usually impose significantly higher
seismic demands on structures than ordinary nonpulse-like ground
motions [4–19].
Many quantitative methods [20–28] for identifying pulse-like
ground motions have been presented in order to account for pulse-like
features and incorporate their effects in seismic hazard calculations.
pulse-like features, however, the appearance of pulses is likely caused by
effects other than forward directivity, such as basins effects, surface
wave effects or surficial soil effects [11,20,29,30]. Since a directivity
pulse arrives early in the time history [1], most algorithms to distinguish
directivity pulses from other pulse-like motions are based on the early
start time of pulses in the velocity time series [20,22,29]. This class of
records is referred to as ‘‘early-arriving” pulse-like ground motions.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that not all early-arriving pulse-like
ground motions are the result of forward-directivity effects [29].
When investigating near-fault directivity effects on seismic demands
in structures, current practice to select forward-directivity ground mo­
tion records are not consistent. Some researchers select ground motions

* Corresponding author. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis, 95616, USA.
** Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: skkunnath@ucdavis.edu (S. Kunnath), bridge@zjut.edu.cn (W. Peng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2019.105997
Received 28 September 2019; Received in revised form 3 December 2019; Accepted 5 December 2019
Available online 13 December 2019
0267-7261/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
C. Li et al.
having noticeably large pulses recorded at stations located within 20 km
from the causative fault [1,6,14,31–35]. Others have selected ground
motions within 30 km of the closest distance to the fault rupture con­
taining ‘early-arriving’ pulses [36–38]. Whereas, in some other studies,
early-arriving pulses with high peak velocity values are often taken as
representative of near-fault directivity motions, assuming that large
early-arriving velocity pulses will produce similar structural response
regardless of the geologic causal mechanisms [11,20,22]. However, the
occurrence of forward rupture directivity effects not only depends on
magnitude and source-to-site distance but also on fault mechanism,
source radiation pattern and other geometric parameters [1,36,39].
Thus, the location of pulses in the time history and source-to-site dis­
tance are not sufficient criteria to select directivity-induced pulse-like
motions.
Based on the source-to-site geometry of ground motions, Shahi and
Baker [29] distinguished the directivity-induced records from a data­
base of early-arriving pulse-like ground motions. Baltzopoulos et al. [40]
investigated seismic ductility demands of multi-linear backbone oscil­
lators under near-fault ground motions – the methodology adopted for
assembling the dataset of rupture-directivity pulses is first based on the
algorithms suggested in Baker [20] and Shahi and Baker [29] following
which a record-by-record examination is conducted to ensure that all the
selected pulse-like motions are caused by directivity effects. Selecting
the forward-directivity ground motions on a case-by-case basis is
meaningful but time-consuming and requires good understanding of the
earthquake scenario (e.g., source mechanism, source-to-site geometry,
etc.).
A prior study [41] examined whether other early-arriving pulse-like
motions affected structural demands in the same manner as the forward
directivity-induced motions. However, the study was limited to
single-degree-of-freedom oscillators with varying strength-reduction
factors and hysteretic models. The main objective of this study is to
systematically investigate the influence of the two sets of ground mo­
tions (forward-directivity pulse-like motions vs. early-arriving pulses
caused by other effects) on realistic multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF)
systems. The MDOF systems are represented by three generic RC
structures: 2-story, 6-story and 20-story frames. The comparative
assessment is performed by examining inter-story drift ductility de­
mands for 211 unscaled and scaled early-arriving pulse-like ground
motions. Section 4 provides some important insights into the factors that
cause the observed response attributes based on spectrum analyses and
simulations from equivalent pulse models.
2. Pulse-like ground motions and RC moment frames used in
study
2.1. Ground motions databases
This study utilizes the set of early-arriving pulse-like ground motions
developed by Shahi and Baker [29]. They use a criterion based on the
cumulative square velocity to reject pulses arriving late in the time
history and then used the source-to-site geometry to classify the
remaining ground motions into 148 directivity-induced pulses and 95
early-arriving pulses caused by other effects. Ground motions were then
rotated to the orientation in which the pulses are strongest. To make sure
all the utilized ground motions have obvious early-arriving pulse-like
features in this study, the authors visually inspected the waveforms of
each ground motion and excluded those records without a clear ‘ear­
ly-arriving’ pulse. This paper focuses on medium and long-period
pulse-like ground motions, hence records with pulse periods less than
0.5s are also excluded. Finally, the resulting dataset adopted for this
study consists of 211 records, including 133 directivity-induced ground
motions and 78 early-arriving pulses caused by effects other than
directivity. All the selected ground motions can be classified as
early-arriving by the criterion proposed by Li et al. [42]. Detailed in­
formation regarding the earthquake, station, closest distance to the
2
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997
Fig. 1. Mean acceleration spectrum for all the utilized early-arriving pulse-
like records.
fault, and the directivity feature is reported in Li et al. [41]. The mean
acceleration spectrum of each dataset is shown in Fig. 1. It is found that
the mean spectral ordinates of the directivity-induced ground motions
are larger than non-directivity-induced motions in the entire periods,
meaning the ground motion intensity of directivity-induced pulses is
normally higher than non-directivity-induced pulses.
2.2. RC frame structures considered in comparative evaluation
To compare the response attributes of building structures subjected
to the two ensembles of early-arriving pulse-like ground motions, three
typical reinforced concrete (RC) moment frame structures are modeled
using OpenSees [43]. Two, six, and twenty-story moment frames with
fundamental periods of 0.3, 1.1, and 2.0 s, respectively, are considered
in the comparative study. All beams have a span of 7.32-m and the story
height is 3.96 m except for the first story of the 6-story frame which is
6.1-m. The 2-story frame has four-bays, whereas the six and
twenty-story frames both have five bays. The structures were assumed to
be located at a site in downtown Berkeley, CA and were designed ac­
cording to the provisions of ASCE 7–10 and ACI-318. The design base
shear coefficients of the frames (i.e., the base shear that causes yielding
in the structure divided by the total weight of the frame) are 0.94, 0.20,
and 0.12, respectively. All frame members are modeled using
force-based beam–column elements with fiber-sections at the four
Gauss–Lobatto integration points along the element length and P-Delta
geometric transformation. The Giuffre–Menegotto–Pinto [44] stress–­
strain model (Steel02 Material) is used for the steel reinforcement with
1% post yield stiffness. Both confined and unconfined concrete fibers are
modeled using a uniaxial constitutive model with linear tension soft­
ening (Concrete02 Material). For dynamic analysis, viscous damping is
specified using Rayleigh damping (wherein the current tangent stiffness
matrix is used to avoid spurious damping forces which is known to occur
when the original or initial system stiffness is used in the
stiffness-proportional part of Rayleigh damping) with 5% of the critical
damping for the first two modes of vibration.
3. Response of frame systems to early-arriving pulse-like
motions
Structural analyses were performed for each of the three structures
described in the previous section using the early-arriving pulse-like
ground motions in the two bins, i.e. directivity-induced and non-
directivity pulses. The story ductility demand (SDD), defined as the
maximum story drift normalized by the story yield drift, is used to
quantify the response of the MDOF structures [5,14]. The story yield
C. Li et al.
Fig. 2. Distributions of Sa(T1) of the selected ground motions for: (a) 2-story frame; (b) 6-story frame; and (c) 20-story frame. (DM: Directivty motions; NDM: Non-
directivity motions).
Fig. 3. Mean acceleration spectrum of the selected ground motions for each frame structure: (a) 2-story; (b) 6-story and (c) 20-story frame.
drift is obtained herein from pushover analyses of each frame from plots
of the story shear versus inter-story drift.
3.1. Selection of ground motion ensembles
A common goal of dynamic structural analysis is to assess the
response of a structure subjected to ground motions at a specified in­
tensity level. The purpose of this section is to compare the seismic de­
mands of 3 MDOF frames under the two ensembles of ground motions
scaled to the same intensity. However, the intensities of the as-recorded
ground motions in the two bins are different, as shown in Fig. 1. To
reasonably and accurately compare nonlinear structural responses
imposed by the two different sets of ground motions without introducing
any bias in structural response estimates from amplitude scaling [45], a
consistent procedure for ground-motion selection for each frame struc­
ture is important. The approach employed in this study is based on a
holistic selection of ground motions suggested by Bradley [46], which
aims to select a suite of records matching a ‘target’ empirical distribu­
tion of one or more intensity measures (IMs). The spectral acceleration
at the fundamental period, Sa(T1), is generally identified as a particu­
larly important intensity measure in estimating seismic demands and is
thus adopted here as the target IM. The essence of the approach is the
3
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997
statistical comparison of the empirical distribution of Sa(T1) for two
ground motion suites. In view of the fact that the number of
directivity-induced pulses is more than the non-directivity-induced
pulses, for each frame structure, the same number of records are
selected from the forward-directivity database to match the ‘target’
distribution (i.e., Sa(T1)) of the non-directivity ensemble, with the
response outliers in the two ensembles first eliminated. Fig. 2 illustrates
the distributions of Sa(T1) of the selected ground motions for each frame
structure under the assumption that Sa(T1) follows a lognormal distri­
bution. The mean value of Sa(T1) for each suite of selected motions is
indicated by a vertical line in the figure. Given that the distributions of
Sa(T1) for the two selected suites of ground motions overlap each other,
the obtained mean ductility demand is unbiased and thus can be
representative of the general seismic responses. Also, the 5% damped
elastic spectra of the selected ground motions are presented in Fig. 3
along with the ASCE 7–10 design spectrum used in the frame design.
3.2. Summary of results
Fig. 4 shows the distribution of story ductility demands over the
height of each MDOF frame structure subjected to the two suites of
pulse-like ground motions. It is seen that the SDD profile and the critical
C. Li et al.
Fig. 4. Mean SDD of the 3 frame structures subject to the same number of
unscaled directivity and non-directivity pulse-like ground motions. (a) 2-storys
frame; (b) 6-story frame; and (c) 20-story frame.
stories in each frame are similar for the two suites of pulse-like motions.
For the 2-story frame in Fig. 4(a), the mean story ductility is nearly the
same for directivity and non-directivity ground motions. Therefore, for
short period MDOF structures located in low and medium seismic zones,
the preliminary conclusion is that the two different types of ground
motions will likely impose very similar seismic demands. An important
observation for the 6-story frame in Fig. 4(b) is that the story ductility
demands in the upper portion of the structure is nearly the same,
whereas the directivity motions caused relatively higher ductility values
in the lower half. For example, the mean ductility demand in the first
story of the 6-story frame under the non-directivity ground motions is
1.53 compared with 1.85 for the directivity motions. In the case of the
20-story frame, it is seen in Fig. 4(c) that the maximum ductility demand
occurs in the 17th story and the minimum ductility values are observed
in the top three stories, even though each member in stories 16 to 20
have the same member size, material strength and reinforcement ratio.
A relatively uniform distribution of story ductility demands is observed
in the lower portion of the structure for both directivity and non-
directivity motions. Note that though the values of ductility over the
height for the 20-story frame are mostly less than 1, meaning that most
stories are still in the elastic stage, the directivity-induced pulse-like
motions result in relatively higher demands than non-directivity ones in
the lower portion of the structure.
The seismic demands shown in Fig. 4 are expectedly in the elastic or
slightly inelastic stage due to the fact that the mean spectral values of the
4
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997
Fig. 5. Mean SDD of the 3 frame structures subject to the same number of
scaled directivity and non-directivity pulse-like ground motions. (a) 2-storys
frame (the dotted lines represent the individually scaled ground motions to
the design level); (b) 6-story frame; and (c) 20-story frame.
unscaled ground motions (see Fig. 3) is much lower than the seismic
design level. However, significant inelastic displacements in the build­
ing components are allowable in a design-level earthquake. It is there­
fore necessary to scale the records to obtain accelerograms consistent
with the code design level for inelastic seismic performance examina­
tion. The two ground motion ensembles selected for each frame are
scaled with the same factor such that the mean spectral ordinate at the
fundamental period matches the ASCE 7–10 design spectrum value.
Note that the distributions of Sa(T1) of the two sets of scaled ground
motions.
Fig. 5 compares the inter-story ductility demands between the scaled
directivity-induced records versus early-arriving pulse-like ground mo­
tions caused by other effects. For the 2-story demands shown in Fig. 5(a),
the directivity-induced records result in relatively lower demands than
non-directivity motions. However, upon closer examination of the
simulation results, it is found that many of the scaled ground motions are
still not strong enough to induce inelastic responses. This can be
partially attributed to the high dispersion of Sa(T1) values for the 2-story
frame. Though the mean value of Sa(T1) matches the design level spec­
tral value, Sa(T1) values for many records are smaller than the design
spectral value. Another factor is that stiff building structures generally
possess higher overstrength, where the design is likely to be governed by
gravity loads [47], and hence unlikely to experience strong nonlinearity
even when subjected to relatively high intensity ground motions. Thus,
C. Li et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997

Fig. 6. Story shear vs. relative displacement of the 2-story structure at its base for (a) one directivity-induced ground motion (i.e., NGA147): and (b) one early-
arriving pulse caused by other effects (i.e., NGA2627). Both records were amplitude-scaled to the design spectrum level.

all the selected records, for the case of the 2-story frame only, are
individually scaled to the design spectral acceleration value to better
investigate the severity of the two ensembles of ground motions. The
mean story ductility demands for the 2-story frame using this new
scaling approach are also shown in Fig. 5(a) with dotted lines, where it is
evident that the ductility demands for the non-directivity records can be
more than 1.5 times than those induced by directivity ground motions.
For the 6-story frame under the unscaled motions, it was observed
that the maximum story ductility demand occurs in the third and the
fourth story (Fig. 4(b)) for directivity-induced and non-directivity re­
cords, respectively. When the ground motion intensity is increased, the
peak demands still occur at the same locations though the difference in
the ductility demands at the lower half frame between the two ground
motion sets is considerably magnified (Fig. 5(b)). For example, the
ductility demand in the lowest story is 3.7 for directivity-induced mo­
tions which is approximately 1.6 times the demand experienced from
non-directivity early-arriving pulse records. For the 20-story structure,
the maximum ductility demand was shown (Fig. 4(c)) to occur in the Fig. 7. Comparison of the mean acceleration spectra of the selected ground
upper stories for the unscaled motions. The larger demands (or early motions for the 2-story frame structure, along with the NGA147 and the
inelastic behavior) in the top portion of the building under low intensity NGA2627 records whose velocity time series are shown in Fig. 6. All records
were scaled such that Sa(T1 ¼ 0.30s) of each individual record matches the
excitations can be attributed to the distribution of elastic story shear
seismic design spectrum value at the same period.
demands which is relatively larger in the upper portion of long-period
structures [5]. Interestingly, as the ground motion intensity is
increased, the maximum ductility demands migrate towards the lower 4. Primary findings: a closer reexamination
half of the frame by comparing Figs. 4(c) and Fig.5(c). This phenomenon
is more evident for directivity-induced ground motions that induce de­ 4.1. Response attributes of the 2-story structure
mands about 1.5 times higher than non-directivity motions.
It is therefore postulated that, for the two ensembles of ground mo­ The analyses in Section 3.2 indicate that the 2-story frame subjected
tion records with the same design level of intensity, the directivity- to the two unscaled ground motion ensembles produce nearly similar
induced motions cause relatively earlier yielding in the lower half of responses, whereas when the selected ground motions are individually
the structure, further resulting in an accelerated growth in seismic de­ scaled to the seismic design level, the non-directivity early-arriving
mands. Consequently, it is not conservative to combine the two en­ pulse-like records result in significantly higher responses than the
sembles of early-arriving pulses together in a single bin, which would directivity-induced records. Previous studies [6,48,49] have suggested
underestimate the influence of the directivity effects on medium and that the high-frequency content in pulse-like records plays an important
long period structures, particularly for high intensity ground motions. role in the response of short-period structures. Since the elastic response
of the 2-story frame is governed by the high-frequency content whose
dominant period is close to the structural fundamental period, the two

5
C. Li et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997

Table 1 expressed as:

Median pulse period value of the selected records for the medium-to-long 8 1� �� � ��� 9
structures. 2πfP
> A 1 þ cos
> t t0 cos½2πfP ðt t0 Þ þ v�; >
>
> >
Structure systems Directivity Non-directivity < 2
> γ >
=
VðtÞ ¼ γ γ (1)
6-story Frame 4.41 s 1.57 s >
> t � t � t0 þ ​ with ​ γ > 1 >
>
> 0 2fP
> 2fP >
>
20-story Frame 4.82 s 1.57 s : ;
0; otherwise

unscaled ground motion ensembles with the same mean Sa(T1) value in which A controls the amplitude of the wavelet; fP is the frequency of
cause similar story ductility demands that are just slightly above the the amplitude-modulated harmonic (or the prevailing frequency of the
elastic range. However, the fundamental structural period lengthens due signal); γ is a parameter that defines the oscillatory character (i.e., zero
to nonlinearity, thus, the frequency content in the period range from T1 crossings) of the signal and assigned a value of 2.0 in this study; t0
to 2T1 (as specified in ASCE 7–10) or even longer periods for weak and specifies the location of the envelope’s peak; and v is the phase of the
short period structural systems [50] have significant effect on the amplitude-modulated harmonic, i.e., ν ¼ 0 and ν ¼ π/2 corresponding to
structural nonlinear response. type 1 and type 2 pulses, respectively. The pulse period is defined as TP
To demonstrate the intrinsic characteristic that results in the ¼ 1/fP and each pulse model is fully defined only by two parameters: the
observed response attributes, the force–displacement curves of the 2-
story structure subjected to one typical directivity-induced record and
one non-directivity early-arriving pulse-like record are shown in Fig. 6.
The two ground motions have the same Sa(T1 ¼ 0.30s) value but
different spectral ordinates at other effective periods as shown in Fig. 7,
along with the mean spectra of the two selected ground motion en­
sembles. The higher spectral values in the period range (i.e., from 0.3s to
around 1.0s) to which the structural nonlinear response is sensitive
cause larger demands for the non-directivity records. Note that the re­
sults are based on statistic studies.

4.2. Response attributes of the medium-to-long period structures

Table 1 lists the median pulse period of ground motion ensembles

selected earlier for dynamic simulations, from which it is seen that the
pulse period in each suite of directivity motions is about 3 times that of
the corresponding non-directivity motions. Thus, one possible factor for
the observed response trends of the 6-story and 20-story structures is the
larger pulse periods in directivity-induced records. In view of fact that
the seismic response of medium and long period systems are normally
dominated by the pulse portion of records [5,14,33,51], the Mavroeidis
and Papageorgiou (M&P) wavelet [33] is adopted here for mathematical
representation of the pulse to gain a closer insight into the main findings
for the 6-story and 20-story frames. To this end, all ground motion ve­
locity waveforms were inspected and the primary pulses could be clas­
sified into two types as shown in Fig. 8. For type-1 (i.e., symmetric)
pulses shown in Fig. 8(a), the velocity pulse consists of three half-cycles,
with the amplitudes of the first and third half-cycles being much smaller
than the amplitude of the central half-cycle. The Type-2 pulses (i.e., Fig. 9. Dependence of distribution of story ductility demands on pulse period
for pulse Type-1: (a) 6-story; and (b) 20-story (Pulses with TP larger than 5.0s
anti-symmetrical) plotted in Fig. 8(b) consist of two central half-cycles
and 7.0s in this case cause extreme story drifts for the 6-story and 20-story
with comparable amplitudes. This section focuses on the two basic
frame, respectively, and thus are not shown in this figure).
pulse types for response evaluations, whose velocity time history can be

Fig. 8. Velocity time histories of basic pulse models: (a) Type-1; and (b) Type-2.

6
C. Li et al.
Fig. 10. Relationship between pulse periods and acceleration spectra of ground motions for: (a) 6-story frame; and (b) 20-story frame. Ground motions were scaled
such that Sa(T1) of each individual record matches the seismic design spectrum value.
pulse period TP and amplitude A.
The 6-story and 20-story RC frames were subjected to the above basic
pulse excitations to study the distributions of story ductility demands of
medium-to-long period structures. Fig. 9 illustrates the story ductility
distributions for Type-1 pulses with different periods, TP, whose am­
plitudes were scaled to obtain the same spectral value at the funda­
mental period of the frame. It is found that when the pulse period is
larger than the structural fundamental period, the maximum story de­
mand occurs in the lower stories; and more importantly the value of the
story ductility demand increases with increasing pulse period especially
for the lower portion of the structures. Therefore, due to the larger pulse
periods, the directivity-induced ground motions cause higher response
in the lower portion of the medium and long period structures than other
early-arriving pulse-like records with the same mean Sa(T1) value. Re­
sults for Type-2 pulse model are qualitatively and quantitatively similar
and hence not reported here. Note that a relatively uniform ductility
distribution is observed in the lower half of the 6-story frame in Fig. 9(a),
whereas the critical story is at mid-height when the frame is subjected to
actual ground motions as shown in Figs. 4(b) and Fig.5(b). This can be
attributed to the differences in the frequency content between pulse
models and recorded ground motions. The contribution of high fre­
quency content of ground motions to the story distribution of seismic
demands in the 6-story frame (i.e., medium-period structures) cannot be
totally ignored.
To further examine the reason why ground motions with longer pulse
period cause higher demands in the lower half of frames, ground mo­
tions are grouped into 4 ranges and the mean scaled acceleration spectra
for the 6-story and 20-story frame are illustrated in Fig. 10(a) and Fig. 10
(b), respectively. It is found that the pulse period is strongly correlated
with the spectral shape. While a direct relationship between pulse period
and spectra value is not evident, it is seen that the larger pulse period
within a certain range, in general, corresponds to higher spectral values
at periods larger than T1. Hence, the larger spectral value in the elon­
gated first mode period (due to inelasticity) results in higher demands in
the lower half of the structures (which is more likely controlled by the
first mode). On the other hand, we can also see in both Fig. 10 (a) and (b)
that this relationship between pulse periods and spectra shape does not
hold true for ground motions having TP greater than 3T1. For example, in
the period range between 1.1 s and 3.0 s, the spectral ordinates for
ground motions with TP > 4 s are smaller than that of ground motions
with 2 s < TP < 4 s. Thus, it is speculated that the acceleration spectra,
even in an effective period range, may not be a reliable indicator to
characterize the damaging effect of ground motions with very long pulse
7
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997
periods. The spectral accelerations provide only a partial picture of the
true intensity character of ground motions with very long pulse periods.
5. Discussions and conclusions
The work summarized in this study attempts to address important
response characteristics of three generic RC concrete frames structures
subjected to different early-arriving pulse-like ground motions – those
caused by forward-directivity effects and those caused by other effects. It
is shown that the influence of the two types of records on structural
demands is complex and depends on the structural fundamental period,
pulse period, ground motion intensity level and the frequency content of
the motions. Findings from the evaluations provide useful insights into
the factors that cause the observed response attributes. The main con­
clusions of this study are summarized as follows:
(1) The mean story ductility in the 2-story frame is similar for the
unscaled directivity and non-directivity ground motions with the
same mean Sa(T1) values, whereas the ductility demands imposed
by the non-directivity records is about 1.5 times larger when the
selected ground motions are individually scaled to the design
level spectral value. For the 6-story and 20-story frames, the
shape of the story ductility demand (SDD) distribution over the
height of the structures is similar for the two unscaled ground
motion ensembles. However, the higher story ductility values in
the lower half of the structure are clearly observed for forward-
directivity records, particularly when the ground motions are
scaled to the seismic design level. These results indicate that it is
conservative to pool the directivity and non-directivity early-
arriving pulses together for short period structures, whereas it
would underestimate the influence of directivity effects on me­
dium and long period structures especially for higher intensity
earthquakes. Additionally, one interesting finding is that the
maximum ductility demands migrate towards the lower half of
the frame for the 20-story structure as the ground motion in­
tensity increases.
(2) For the stiff structure (2-story frame) whose response is domi­
nated by the 1st mode, the non-directivity records, in a statistical
sense, have larger spectral values at effective periods beyond the
structural fundamental period, thus, resulting in higher inelastic
demands than directivity-induced ground motions.
(3) The SDD profile and the critical location in the 6-story and 20-
story structures are influenced heavily by the pulse period and
C. Li et al.
ground motion intensity. More specifically, for low intensity
ground motions when the structure is in the elastic or slightly
nonlinear stage, the period influence is not obvious, and differ­
ences in the demands for the two ensembles of records with the
same mean Sa(T1) value are also insignificant. However, with an
increase in the ground motion intensity, the period dependence of
SDD becomes significant and higher demands are observed for
directivity-induced records with longer pulse period, which was
further investigated based on the response characteristics of
equivalent pulses. The maximum story demand tends to occur at
the bottom story for the 20-story frame when the pulse period is
larger than the structural fundamental period; and a relatively
uniform ductility distribution is observed in the lower half of the
6-story frame, whereas the maximum drifts occurred at mid-
height when the frame was subjected to the actual ground mo­
tion ensembles. More importantly the story ductility demands
increase with increasing pulse period particularly in the lower
half of the structures.
The observations and conclusions reported in this study were ob­
tained from numerical simulations of three typical RC frames with
different heights (or fundamental periods) and the utilized set of ground
motions. More structural configurations need to be investigated in
future research with a larger ground motion database so that the find­
ings can be applied in seismic design.
Declaration of competing interest
There are no conflicts of interest for any of the authors.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Cuihua Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Writing - original draft. Sashi Kunnath: Supervision, Methodology,
Writing - review & editing. Zhanxuan Zuo: Formal analysis. Weibing
Peng: Conceptualization, Resources. Changhai Zhai: Conceptualiza­
tion, Funding acquisition.
Acknowledgements
The first author acknowledges support for this research provided by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51908504 and
51708523).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2019.105997.
References
[1] Somerville PG, Smith NF, Graves RW, Abrahamson NA. Modification of empirical
strong ground motion attenuation relations to include the amplitude and duration
effects of rupture directivity. Seismol Res Lett 1997;68(1):199–222.
[2] Somerville PG. Magnitude scaling of the near fault rupture directivity pulse. Phys
Earth Planet Inter 2003;137(1):201–12.
[3] Spudich P, Chiou BSJ. Directivity in NGA earthquake ground motions: analysis
using isochrone theory. Earthq Spectra 2008;24(1):279–98.
[4] Hall JF, Heaton TH, Halling MW, Wald DJ. Near-source ground motion and its
effects on flexible buildings. Earthq Spectra 1995;11(4):569–605.
[5] Alavi B, Krawinkler H. Behavior of moment-resisting frame structures subjected to
near-fault ground motions. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2004;33(1):687–706.
[6] Mavroeidis GP, Dong G, Papageorgiou AS. Near-fault ground motions, and the
response of elastic and inelastic single-degree-of freedom (SDOF) systems. Earthq
Eng Struct Dyn 2004;33(9):1023–49.
[7] Akkar S, Yazgan U, Gulkan P. Drift estimates in frame buildings subjected to near-
fault ground motions. J Struct Eng-ASCE 2005;131(7):1014–24.
[8] Kalkan E, Kunnath SK. Effects of fling step and forward directivity on seismic
response of buildings. Earthq Spectra 2006;22(2):367–90.
8
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997
[9] Mylonakis G, Voyagaki E. Yielding oscillator subjected to simple pulse waveforms:
numerical analysis & closed-form solutions. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2006;35(15):
1949–74.
[10] Luco N, Cornell CA. Structure-specific scalar intensity measures for near-source
and ordinary earthquake ground motions. Earthq Spectra 2007;23(2):357–92.
[11] Champion C, Liel A. The effect of near-fault directivity on building seismic collapse
risk. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2012;41(1):1391–409.
[12] Wen WP, Zhai CH, Li S, Chang ZW, Xie LL. Constant damage inelastic displacement
ratios for the near-fault pulse-like ground motions. Eng Struct 2014;59(1):
599–607.
[13] Wu G, Zhai C, Li S, Xie LL. Effects of Near-fault ground motions and equivalent
pulses on large crossing transmission tower-line system. Eng Struct 2014;77:161–9.
[14] Sehhati R, Rodriguez-Marek A, ElGawady M, Cofer WF. Effects of near-fault ground
motions and equivalent pulses on multi-story structures. Eng Struct 2011;33(3):
767–79.
[15] Güneş N, Ulucan ZC. Nonlinear dynamic response of a tall building to near-fault
pulse-like ground motions. Bull Earthq Eng 2019;17(6):2989–3013.
[16] Yang F, Wang G, Ding Y. Sensitivity analysis of reinforced concrete frame
structures under near-fault pulse-like ground motions using a broadband
simulation method. J Earthq Eng 2019:1–26.
[17] Fang C, Zhong Q, Wang W, et al. Peak and residual responses of steel moment-
resisting and braced frames under pulse-like near-fault earthquakes. Eng Struct
2018;177:579–97.
[18] Ji K, Ren Y, Wen R, et al. Near-field velocity pulse-like ground motions on February
6, 2018 MW6. 4 Hualien, Taiwan earthquake and structural damage implications.
Soil Dyn Earthq Eng 2019;126:105784.
[19] Chen ZY, Liu ZQ. Effects of pulse-like earthquake motions on a typical subway
station structure obtained in shaking-table tests. Eng Struct 2019;198:109557.
[20] Baker JW. Quantitative classification of near-fault ground motions using wavelet
analysis. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2007;97(5):1486–501.
[21] Yaghmaei-Sabegh S. Detection of pulse-like ground motions based on continues
wavelet transform. J Seismol 2010;14(4):715–26.
[22] Zhai CH, Chang ZW, Li S, Chen ZQ, Xie LL. Quantitative identification of near-fault
pulse-like ground motions based on energy. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2013;103(5):
2591–603.
[23] Mukhopadhyay S, Gupta VK. Directivity pulses in near-fault ground motions—I:
identification, extraction and modeling. Soil Dyn Earthq Eng 2013;50(1):1–15.
[24] Chang ZW, Sun XD, Zhai CH, Zhao JX, Xie LL. An improved energy-based approach
for selecting pulse-like ground motions. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2016;45(1):
2405–11.
[25] Zhao GC, Xu LJ, Xie LL. A simple and quantitative algorithm for identifying pulse-
like ground motions based on zero velocity point method. Bull Seismol Soc Am
2016;106(3):1011–23.
[26] Kardoutsou V, Ioannis T, Psycharis IN. A new pulse indicator for the classification
of ground motions. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2017;107(3):1356–64.
[27] Zhai C, Li C, Kunnath S, Wen W. An efficient algorithm for identifying pulse-like
ground motions based on significant velocity half-cycles. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn
2018;47(3):757–71.
[28] Chen X, Wang D, Zhang R. Identification of pulse periods in near-fault ground
motions using the HHT method. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2019. https://doi.org/
10.1785/0120190046.
[29] Shahi SK, Baker JW. An efficient algorithm to identify strong-velocity pulses in
multicomponent ground motions. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2014;104:2456–66.
[30] Bradley BA. Period dependence of response spectrum damping modification factors
due to source-and site-specific effects. Earthq Spectra 2015;31(2):745–59.
[31] Bray JD, Rodriguez-Marek A. Characterization of forward-directivity ground
motions in the near-fault region. Soil Dyn Earthq Eng 2004;24:815–28.
[32] Ruiz-Garcia J. Inelastic displacement ratios for seismic assessment of structures
subjected to forward-directivity near-fault ground motions. J Earthq Eng 2011;15
(3):449–68.
[33] Mavroeidis GP, Papageorgiou AS. A mathematical representation of near-fault
ground motions. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2003;93:1099–131.
[34] Liossatou E, Fardis MN. Residual displacements of RC structures as SDOF systems.
Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2015;44(4):713–34.
[35] Liossatou E, Fardis MN. Near-fault effects on residual displacements of RC
structures. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2016;45(9):1391–409.
[36] Iervolino I, Cornell CA. Probability of occurrence of velocity pulses in near-source
ground motions. Bull Seismol Soc Am 2008;98(5):2262–77.
[37] Chioccarelli E, Iervolino I. Near-source seismic demand and pulse-like records: a
discussion for L’Aquila earthquake. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2010;39(9):1039–62.
[38] Iervolino I, Chioccarelli E, Baltzopoulos G. Inelastic displacement ratio of
nearsource pulse-like ground motions. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2012;41(15):2351–7.
[39] Shahi SK, Baker JW. An empirically calibrated framework for including the effects
of near-fault directivity in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis. Bull Seismol Soc
Am 2011;101(2):742–55.
[40] Baltzopoulos G, Vamvatsikos D, Iervolino I. Analytical modelling of near-source
pulse-like seismic demand for multi-linear backbone oscillators. Earthq Eng Struct
Dyn 2016;45(11):1797–815.
[41] Li C, Kunnath S, Zhai C. Influence of early-arriving pulse-like ground motions on
ductility demands of single-degree-of-freedom systems. J Earthq Eng 2018:1–24.
[42] Li C, Zhai C, Kunnath S. A Criterion to select directivity-induced pulses. Bull
Seismol Soc Am 2018;109(1):476–81.
[43] OpenSees. Open system for earthquake engineering simulation. In: Pacific
earthquake engineering research center. Berkeley: University of California; 2017.
http://opensees.berkeley.edu.
C. Li et al.
[44] CEB RC. Elements under cyclic loading – state of the art report. Thomas Telford;
1996.
[45] Bradley BA. A generalized conditional intensity measure approach and holistic
ground-motion selection. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2010;39(12):1321–42.
[46] Luco N, Bazzurro P. Does amplitude scaling of ground motion records result in
biased nonlinear structural drift responses. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2007;36(13):
1813–35.
[47] Uang CM. Establishing R (or Rw) and Cd factors for building seismic provisions.
J Struct Eng 1991;117(1):19–28.
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 130 (2020) 105997
[48] Ghobarah A. Response of structures to near-fault ground motion. In: Proceedings of
the 13th world conference on earthquake engineering, Vancouver, BC, Canada;
2004.
[49] Khoshnoudian F, Ahmadi E, Sohrabi S. Response of nonlinear soil-MDOF structure
systems subjected to distinct frequency-content components of near-fault ground
motions. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2014;43(5):701–16.
[50] Katsanos EI, Sextos AG. Inelastic spectra to predict period elongation of structures
under earthquake loading. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 2015;44(11):1765–82.
[51] Menun C, Fu Q. An analytical model for near-fault ground motions and the
response of SDOF systems. In: Proceedings of the 7th US national conference on
earthquake engineering, boston, Massachusetts; 2002. p. 21–5.