A Study of ground motion scaling methods for three dimensional analysis of building systems

In 2009, a paper by Weng Y.T. et al. was published in Earthquake Spectra proposed multi-mode ground motion scaling (MMS) methods include MMS-V method and MMS-D method which applied the SRSS or CQC rule in computing peak seismic demands for 2-D symmetric structures. The aim of this thesis is to develop those MMS methods for use in reducing the scatter in the seismic demands for both 3-D symmetric and asymmetric structures. The developed MMS methods utilize CQC rule in computing peak seismic demand. Using four case studies of both symmetric and asymmetric 20-storey buildings, considering both structural elastic and inelastic responses, this thesis compared the effectiveness of the MMS-V method and MMS-D method with the two other common scaling procedures, denoted as Code method and Sa(T1) method. It is illustrated that the MMS method is effective and reliable in reducing the scatter in the peak seismic demands computed from whether the response spectral analysis, the response history analysis (RHA) or the non-linear response history analysis (NLRHA)