Potential Damage Grading of Pulse-Like Ground Motion

Pulse-like ground motions often cause severe structural damage or even collapse. Although there has been extensive research on the causes and parameters of their destructive nature, the parameters previously provided often contain subjective factors and can only qualitatively determine the potential damage-causing seismic motions from the motion itself (or from a simple combination with the basic period of the structure). Moreover, they have not quantitatively distinguished between pulse-like and non-Pulse-like ground motions based on specific structural characteristics, nor provided parameters to assess the potential damaging effects of different pulsating seismic motions on various structures. About 90 pulse-like seismic records were filtered from the PEER (Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center) seismic motion database, and based on the V² time-frequency response spectrum of the selected seismic records combined with the structural modal mass participation factor, the concept of Potential Damage Energy (PDE) was proposed. The pulsating seismic records were classified by intensity based on the PDE values of the selected records, thus providing a reasonable basis for selecting pulsating seismic records under different design intensity conditions for rare earthquakes.