Filtered incremental velocity: A novel approach in intensity measures for seismic collapse estimation

This study evaluates the performance of a new intensity measure, referred to as filtered incremental velocity FIV3, which is computed using time-domain features extracted from an acceleration time series and is aimed at the evaluation of structural collapse. This novel approach focuses on the area under a small number of acceleration pulses in the ground motion instead of focusing on the peak response of linear elastic oscillators as in many recently proposed measures of ground motion intensity. FIV3 is developed based on previous research that has highlighted the close relation between the incremental velocity of a ground motion and its potential to induce large inelastic incursions on structures. However, unlike the original definition of incremental velocity which provides a single level of intensity for a ground motion, this new intensity measure is period-dependent and computed as the sum of the three largest incremental velocities obtained from a low-pass filtered ground acceleration time series. Efficiency and sufficiency with respect to several ground motion parameters such as magnitude, source-to-site-distance, spectral shape, scale factor, and duration are carefully evaluated and compared against those computed with some traditional and recently proposed intensity measures using collapse results from a four-story reinforced concrete frame. Results indicate that FIV3 leads to lower variability of collapse estimates and therefore higher efficiency as well as high sufficiency compared with those of other ground motion intensity parameters indicating that this new intensity measure is a promising parameter for structural collapse risk assessment.