Probabilistic analysis of peak response to nonstationary seismic excitations

The main objective of this study is to examine the accuracy of the complete quadratic combination (CQC) rule with the modal responses defined by the ordinates of the uniform hazard spectra (UHS) to evaluate the peak responses of the multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) systems subjected to nonstationary seismic excitations. For the probabilistic analysis of the peak responses, it is considered that the seismic excitations can be modeled using evolutionary power spectra density functions with uncertain model parameters. More specifically, a seismological model and the Kanai-Tajimi model with the boxcar or the exponential modulating functions were used to define the evolutionary power spectral density functions in this study. A set of UHS was obtained based on the probabilistic analysis of transient responses of single-degree-of-freedom systems subjected to the seismic excitations. The results of probabilistic analysis of the peak responses of MDOF systems were obtained, and compared with the peak responses calculated by using the CQC rule with the modal responses given by the UHS. The comparison seemed to indicate that the use of the CQC rule with the commonly employed correlation coefficient and the peak modal responses from the UHS could lead to significant under- or over-estimation when contributions from each of the modes are similarly significant.