Influence of Earthquake Attack Angle on Seismic Demands for Structures under Bi-Directional Ground Motions

Abstract

The earthquake may attack the structural building from any angle, but in current seismic design codes, this type of uncertainty is seldom accounted. The uncertainty associated with the direction of earthquake excitation was considered in this paper, and its effect on structural responses was investigated. For this purpose, a simple 3-dimensional model with symmetric plan was established, which had fundamental periods ranged from 0.1s to 5.0s, and was subjected to a set of 30 ground motion pairs for which both linear and nonlinear time history analyses were performed. Analyzing results showed that, on average, the elastic roof acceleration is 32% underestimated, and the inelastic roof displacement is 18% underestimated if the variation of earthquake excitation direction is not consider. Recognizing this, a modification factor for the seismic demand was proposed thorough a statistical analysis, which guarantees a probability of 95% design safety