Generation of Synthetic Ground Motion in Time Domain

Abstract

The importance of seismic design is greatly emphasized recently in Korea, resulting in an increase in the number of dynamic analysis being performed. One of the most important input parameters for the dynamic seismic analysis is input ground motion. However, it is common practice to use recorded motions from U.S. or Japan without considering the seismic environment of Korea or synthetic motions generated in the frequency domain. The recorded motions are not suitable for the seismic environment of Korea since the variation in the duration and energy with the earthquake magnitude cannot be considered. The artificial motions generated in frequency domain used to generated design response spectrum compatible ground motion has the problem of generating motions that have different frequency characteristics compared to real recordings. In this study, an algorithm that generates target response spectrum compatible ground motions in time domain is used to generate a suite of input ground motions. The generated motions are shown to preserve the non-stationary characteristics of the real ground motion and at the same, almost perfectly match the design response spectrum.