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To cite this article: JONATHAN HANCOCK , JENNIE WATSON-LAMPREY , NORMAN A. ABRAHAMSON , JULIAN J. BOMMER∗ ,
ALEXANDROS MARKATIS , EMMA McCOYH & RISHMILA MENDIS (2006) AN IMPROVED METHOD OF MATCHING RESPONSE SPECTRA
OF RECORDED EARTHQUAKE GROUND MOTION USING WAVELETS, Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 10:S1, 67-89, DOI:
10.1080/13632460609350629
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Journal of Earthquake Engineering
Vol. 10, Special Issue 1 (2006) 67-89 @ Imperial College P m r
?iww.icpress.co.uK
@ Imperial College Press
JONATHAN H A N C O C K ~JENNIE
, WATSON- LAMPREY^,
NORMAN A. ABRAHAMSON~, JULIAN J. B O M M E R * ~ ~ ,
ALEXANDROS MARK AT IS^, EMMA M C C O Y ~and ~ RISHMILA MENDIS?
+Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, UK
$University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
B ~ a c i j kGas and Electricity Company, Sun Francisco, USA
n t Mathematics, Imperial College London, UK
l l ~ e ~ a r t m e of
Dynamic nonlinear analysis of structures requires the seismic input to be defined in the
form of acceleration time-series, and these will generally be required to be compatible
with the elastic response spectra representing the design seismic actions at the site. The
advantages of using real accelerograms matched to the target response spectrum using
wavelets for this purpose are discussed. The program RspMatch, which performs spectral
matching using wavelets, is modified using new wavelets that obviate the need t o sub-
'sequently apply a baseline correction. The new version of the program, RspMatchSOO5,
enables the accelerograms to be matched to the pseud-acceleration or displacement
spectral ordinates as well as the spectrum of absolute acceleration, and additionally
allows the matching to be performed simultaneously to a given spectrum at several
damping ratios.
1. Introduction
Seismic design of structures is invariably based on representation of the earthquake
actions in the form of a response spectrum. In many situations, however, including
the design of critical facilities, highly irregular buildings and base-isolated struc-
tures, the simulation of structural response using a scaled elastic response spectrum
is not considered appropriate to verify the earthquake resistance. In such cases,
dynamic nonlinear analysis of the structure will be required and the seismic input
then needs to be defined in the form of acceleration time-series, which wilI gener-
ally be required to be compatible with the elastic response spectra representing the
design seismic actions at the site. There are many different options for obtaining
suites of accelerograms for use in engineering design and assessment [e.g. Bomrner
and Acevedo, 20041, the most widely used approaches being the use of artificial
spectrum-compatible time-series, generated from white noise, and the use of scaled
real accelerograms.
Artificial records constitute a convenient tool but their shortcomings, arising
from their dissimilarity with real earthquake ground motions in terms of num-
ber of cycles, phase content and duration, are widely recognised, and their use in
nonlinear analyses is not recommended. These problems are avoided by using real
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properties allows the record to be matched to a given target spectrum with several
different levels of damping simultaneously. This feature is particularly useful when
long-period highly damped spectral displacements are relevant, such as in the
direct displacement-based design approaches [e.g. Kowdsky et al., 19951 and in
the analysis of buildings and bridges with base isolation or supplementary damping
devices.
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2. Existing Wavelet M e t h o d s
There are several different methods of using wavelets to adjust accelerograrns so
that they have a closer match to a target response spectrum. Mukherjee and Gupta
[2002a, 2002bl and Suarez and Montejo [2003,2005]use wavelets and the continuous
wavelet transform (CWT) to de-compose the original acceleration time-series into a
number of time series with energy in non-overlapping frequency bands. An iterative
procedure is used to scale each time history so that when they are added together
they produce a spectrum-compatible ground motion. Although the approximate
duration of the original accelerogram is retained using this type of adjustment pro-
cedure, the adjusted accelerograms have visibly different amplitudes and frequency
contents from the original accelerogram.
The method proposed by Lilhanand and Tseng [1987, 19881 employs wavelets
but uses the response of elastic SDOF systems rather than the CWT. This enables
accelerograms to be made spectrum compatible with smaller adjustments than the
wavelet adjustment methodologies which use the CWT. The Lilhanand and Tseng
[1987, 19881 methodology is adopted as the basis for this work,
A flowchart showing the original procedure as employed in RspMatch is given
in Fig. 1. The essence of the methodology is as follows:
(1) Calculate the response of an elastic SDOF system under the action of the
acceleration time-series for each period and damping level to be matched.
(2) Compare the peak of each SDOF response with the target amplitude and deter-
mine the mismatch.
(3) Add wavelets to the acceleration time-series with the appropriate amplitudes
and phasing so that the peak of each response matches the target amplitude.
One wavelet is used to match one SDOF response.
Each wavelet is applied to the time series so that the time of maximum SDOF
response under the action of the wavelet is the same as the time of the peak response
to be adjusted from the unadjusted acceleration time-series. A fundamental assump
tion of the method is that the time of the peak response does not change as a result
of adding the wavelet adjustment. This assumption is not always valid and this can
lead to diverging solutions, as is discussed in more detail later.
70 J. Hancock et al.
I
Fig. 1. Basic methodology of RspMatch program.
The amplitude of each wavelet used in the adjustment is determined by the solu-
tion of a set of simultaneous equations that account for the cross correlation of each
wavelet with each response to be matched. This can be expressed in matrix form:
Matching Response Spectra of Recorded Earthquake Ground Motion 71
where C is a square matrix with elements that describe the amplitude of each
SDOF response, a t the time that the response needs to be adjusted, under the
action of each wavelet, b is a vector of linear scale factors for each wavelet used
in the adjustment, and 6R is a vector of the required adjustment, the difference
between the peak SDOF response of the unadjusted time-series and the required
amplitude specified by the target spectra response for each period and damping
level to be matched.
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The wavelet scale factors in the b vector are found using amplitude of the
required adjustment and the inverse of the correlation matrix C:
3. Wavelet F u n c t i o n d Form
One of the key features to the adjustment method is the functional form used for
the wavelet adjustment. Wavelets have many different functional forms, but in the
interest of brevity, only those used in the RspMatch and RspMatch2005 programs
are described in this section.
72 J . Hancock et al.
where,
a j (t) is the amplitude of the j t h wavelet a t time t
t, is the time of the peak response of the jth oscillator under the action of
the j t h wavelet
wj is the circular frequency of the j t h wavelet
,Oj is the damping level (proportion of critical) of the j t h oscillator
W: is the damped circular frequency w; = uj
Although this wavelet is very efficient in adjusting the response, it has the
disadvantage that it corrupts the velocity and displacement time-history because
the wavelet does not end with zero velocity or displacement (Fig. 2). To over-
come this issue two new displacement compatible wavelets have been created for
RspMatch2005.
where Atj is the difference between time of peak response t j -and the reference
origin of the wavelet. Unlike the other wavelets described above, this wavelet is only
applied for a fixed number of cycles (N,) specified by the user and automatically
reduced by the program a s required to ensure the whole wavelet is applied to the
accelerogram.
The error in the final displacement from the Suarez and Montejo wavelet is
obtained by double integration of the wavelet and applying the appropriate initial
conditions:
TOovercome this problem a sinusoidal half cycle at the start and end of the
wavelet is used to correct the displacement time-series (Fig. 2). The amplitude of
the sinusoidal correction is given by:
In the unlikely event that there is insufficient space within the record to apply a
sinusoidal correction a t the end of the wavelet, a polynomial baseline correction is
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The frequency dependence of lClj should be consistent with the reference time-
history. That is, if the reference time-history has a short duration at a particular
frequency, the Gj should be selected such that the adjustment function at that
frequency will also have a short duration. A tri-linear model for qi(f) is used in
this program:
where f l , fi, .zl and z2 are constants and f j is the frequency of the j t h wavelet in
Hz; the recommended values of the constants are f r = 1Hz, f2 = 4Hz, 21 = 1.25
and .z2 = 0.25. The equation for the corrected tapered cosine wavelet is given by:
The corrected tapered cosine wavelet is set so that it starts with an initial 114
acceleration cycle t o avoid long-period drift in the displacement time-series.
Matching Response Spectra of Recorded E a r t h p u k e Ground Motion 75
Both of these sources of divergence are illustrated in Fig. 3 and are caused by
the cross correlation of different wavelet corrections. Put simply the wavelet added
to correct one period and damping level can also affect the peak response of SDOF
systems a t other periods and damping levels. A general framework for describ-
ing non-linear problems is presented by Tarantola [2005]. The specific methods
developed by the authors for the solving this particular problem is described in the
following sections.
1 - Li
.
---
--
W R - P C m n
R a p o m e Adparmm
N W RO¶pOlls
\Naw Secandary Peak
-1.5 -
2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
Time (seconds)
Fig. 3. Illustration of sources of diverging response. Note that the response amplitude remains
approximateIy unchanged at the time of the original peak response, but the response increases
through both a phase shift and the emergence of a secondary peak.
76 J. Hancock et al.
off-diagonal terms by a constant factor. From conducting trials with different off-
diagonal reduction factors, it is found that a reduction factor of about 0.7 is very
effective in providing numerical stability.
4
4.75.4
(seconds)
15.5 t 5.6
Time
15.7 15.8 1.
used when matching spectral displacements. PSA can be calculated directly from
the spectral displacement, SD for any period T:
t No
*
Load next subgroup
+
l~nbulate spectral^^ Add wave'et adjust
I
+ secondary peak
Reduce amplitude of
I Scale and sum wavelets to create adiustment function 1 elements in 6R except
that of diverging
I Temporally add adjustment to total adjustment function I spectra1 point
1- and check response 1 7
1
within a halfcycie of an
function to \ existing matched / Yes
accelerogram
before applying the wavelets adjustments. The issues related to selecting and scaling
accelerograrns are beyond the scope of this paper but the reader is referred to
the following papers for guidance - and different perspectives - on this issue:
Watson-Lamprey and Abrahamson [2006a], Bommer and Acevedo [2004], Naeim
et al. [2004], Malhotra [2003].The accelerograms in this paper have been selected
in accordance with the recommendations of Bommer and Acevedo [2004]who show
that distance has little influence on spectral shape and so they recommend a narrow
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search window in terms of magnitude but allow broad limits in terms of distance.
Some engineers might consider the scale factors used in this paper are quite large;
however, a recent study by Watson-Lamprey and Abrahamson [2006b] found that
spectral matched accelerograms with scale factors of over a factor of 10 could be
used without causing a bias in nonlinear response.
For the illustrative example shown herein, a seed accelerogram has been selected
from the 3551 records of the PEER NGA dataset [PEER 20051. Initial selection is
conducted based on an approximate match to the earthquake magnitude and the
spectral shape using the RbIS of the difference in normalised spectral accelera-
tion (ASAnRMs), Equation (14). Other methods of matching spectral shapes are
possible: for example, the shape could be normalised to a high-frequency spectral
acceleration rather than PGA, or to the log of the normalised spectral acceleration.
The median 5% damped target spectra is generated according to the method pro-
posed by Bornrner et al. [2000]using the peak ground motions proposed by Tromans
and Bomrner [2002] notwithstanding the limitations associated with these formula-
tions arising from their derivation using analogue recordings [Boore and Bommer,
2005]. The target spectra for damping levels other than 5% are obtained using
Matching Response Spectra of Recorded Earthquake Ground Motion 81
where, 7 is the linear scale factor between the 5% damped response spectrum and
the required spectrum a t p damping at intermediate periods. Equation (15) is a
simplification and is used herein only for illustrative purposes; the scaling of the
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5%-damped spectral ordinates for higher damping levels has recently been shown
to be a function of the strong-motion duration [Bommer and Mendis, 2005; Mendis
and Bommer, 20061.
5.3. M a t c h i n g 5% damped s p e c t r u m
The ground motion acceleration is adjusted so that it matches the target spec-
trum between 0.05 s and 5 s period (Fig. 7). Matching to longer periods is possible
but not conducted because the filter frequency of the seed accelerogram is 5s;
indeed the useable frequency range will be less than the filter frequency (e.g. Akkar
and Bommer, 2006). The average spectral misfit between 0.05s and 5 s period for
the 5% damping level has improved from 15% in the linearly scaled record to 1%
after wavelet adjustment with RspMatch2005. The average of the spectral misfit is
defined as:
Note that precisely the same average misfit is calculated if the PSA terms in
Eq. (16) are replaced with SD. When comparing results the misfit must be cal-
culated at closely-spaced periods, not just those used to conduct the spectral
matching.
Examination of the acceleration, velocity and displacement time-series before
and after the wavelet adjustment shows that the characteristics of the original
records have been retained (Fig. 8). Checks of the build up of Arias intensity also
demonstrate that the energy distribution within the record is similar to the originaI
ground motion and that the totaI energy content has been changed by less than
about 5% by the wavelet adjustment (Fig. 9).
5.4. M a t c h i n g m u l t i p l e d a m p i n g levels
The ability of RspMatch2005 to adjust accelerograms to fit multiple damping levels
is investigated by running the program four times, fitting the accelerogram used in
the previous section to increasing numbers of damping levels (Fig. 10). Figure 10
shows that matching to the 5% damping spectra alone does not ensure a good
match at other damping levels. Although the match is not exact with four d a m p
ing levels, the program has reduced the average spectral misfit at all damping
82 J. Hancock et al.
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Period (seconds)
3or
I
6. Discussion
An improved method is presented for the wavelet adjustment of recorded ground
motions to achieve a match between the target design spectrum and the response
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Time (seconds)
Fig. 9. Build up of Arias intensity from the original linearly-scaled accelerogram (grey line) and
adjusted ground motion (bla& line).
spectra of the accelerograrns. New wavelets have been developed that have zero
final velocity and displacement, ensuring that records do not require a baseline
correction after wavelet adjustment. The procedure is appIied using pseudo-spectral
acceleration so that spectral dispIaceme$s can be matched. This method enables
records to be adjusted so that they match the target response spectrum at more
damping levels than previously possible, although the goodness-of-fit to the target
spectrum reduces as the number of target damping levels increases.
The option of adjusting real strong-motion recordings to acheve a match to the
target spectrum renders the use of artificial spectrum-compatible signals generated
from white noise redundant. The choices that remains then are to use natural
accelerograms scaled to achieve an approximate match to the target spectrum
over a specified period range or to adjust the records using the wavelets tech-
nique to achieve a close match with the target spectral ordinates. The latter option
reduces the variability of the inelastic response, which is particularly beneficial as
the number of accelerograms required to predict the response to a given confidence
level depends on the standard deviation of the response. This means that inelastic
response can be predicted with greater conlidence and fewer analyses using accelero-
grams matched to the elastic response spectrum. Studies by Carballo [ZOO01 and
Watson-Lamprey and Abrahamson [2006b] suggest that matched accelerograms can
reduce the standard deviation of the inelastic response by a factor of 2 compared to
scaled accelerograms. This reduces the number of accelerograms to estimate
the inelastic response to a given confidence level by a factor of about 4.
Matching Response Spectra of Recorded Earthquake Ground Motion 85
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Period (seconds)
-
S I
Period (seconds) Period (seconds)
Fig. 10. Spectral matching for different damping levels. Matched to 5% damped spectrum (top
row); 5 and 10% damped spectra (second mw); 5, 10 and 20% damped spectra (thinf mw); 5, 10,
20 and 30% damped spectra (bottom row). Pseudo spectral acceleration (left column) and spectral
displacement (right column).
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86 J. Hancock et al.
Matching Response Spectra of Recorded Earthquake Gmund Motion 87
Table 1. Average spectral misfit between 0.05 and 5 seconds period for adjustment
conducted a t different damping levels.
Damping Level
Damping level matched 5% 10% 20% 30% All
Original 14.8 12.7 8.7 6.6 10.7
Matched 5% 1.0 6.1 10.6 12.3 7.5
Matched 5 and 10% 2.8 2.3 6.3 9.2 5.2
Matched 5, 10 and 20% 4.7 2.8 2.1 3.6 3.3
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Time (seconds)
Fig. 12. Arias Intensity from original linearly scaled ground motion ( g r e y line) and that adjusted
to match the 5, 10, 20 and 30% damping levels from 0.05 to 5 seconds period (black line).
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our thanks to Luis Montejo for sending us his thesis and
journal publications and Luis Suarez for interesting discussions on this subject. We
88 J. Hancock et al.
would also like to acknowledge fruitful discussions with John Douglas and David
Boore on the possible methods of measuring the difference between recorded and
target spectral shape. The paper has benefited from the thorough reviews of Miguel
Castro and two anonymous reviewers, for which we are most grateful. The work
of the first and seventh authors is supported by doctoral training grants from the
EPSRC and Marie Curie Fellowships.
References
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Naeim, F.,Alimoradi, A. and Pezeshk, S. [2004] "Selection and scaling of ground motion
time histories for structural design using genetic algorithms," Earthquake Spectra
20(2). 413-426.
Naeim, F. and Lew, M. [I9951 "On the use of design spectrum compatible time histories,"
Earthquake Spectm 11(1), 111-127.
PEER I20051 PEER NGA Database. http://peer.berkeley.edu/nga/index.html, Pacific
Earthquake Engineering Research, University of California, Berkeley. -
Downloaded by [University of California, San Francisco] at 01:24 17 December 2014