The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Linear models to predict the nonlinear seismic behavior of a one-story steel frame

Valdimarsson, Helgi; Shah, Arvind H.; McNiven, Hugh D.

UCB/EERC-81/13, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1981-09-01, 127 pages (555.3/V245/1981)

In this report, six methods of linearization are used to construct various equivalent linear models for predicting the nonlinear seismic behavior of a one-story steel frame constructed and tested on an earthquake simulator. The models are assessed by comparing their response predictions with the measured response for the El Centro, Pacoima, Taft, and Parkfield, California, earthquake excitations. The study indicates that the dependence of the structure's nonlinear response on the characteristics of the earthquake excitation is so complex that there is no way that the linearization schemes considered can have the required generality for limiting the maximum displacement response to a specified value. Nonetheless, these methods may provide valuable guidelines for design.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-81-13.pdf (4 MB)