Resonance and criticality measure of ground motions via probabilistic critical excitation method

Resonant characteristics of recorded ground motions are investigated and a new measure of criticality of ground motions is proposed. Four classes of recorded ground motions, i.e., (i) near fault motions (rock records), (ii) near fault motions (soil records), (iii) long duration motions (rock records) and (iv) long duration motions (soil records), are taken from Abrahamson N, Ashford S, Elgamal A, Kramer S, Seible F, Somerville P, Proc of First PEER Workshop on Characterization of Special Source Effects, 1998. It is shown that resonant characteristics of recorded ground motions can be captured appropriately by means of the probabilistic critical excitation method due to the present author regardless of the type of ground motions and the distance between the critical response and the actual one can be a new measure of criticality of ground motions. The time-averaged approximate treatment of nonstationary ground motions as stationary ones is shown to be adequate for structures with shorter natural periods subjected to long duration ground motions.