Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597

www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Eect of earthquake duration on structural reliability

J.W. van de Lindt a,
, Gin-Huat Goh b
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1372, USA
b
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931-1295, USA

Received 9 January 2003; received in revised form 19 May 2004; accepted 24 May 2004

Abstract

Modern design methodologies rely on accurate estimates of structural reliability indices for code calibration and design. In gen-
eral, most methodologies do not explicitly account for earthquake duration when calculating reliability indices. This paper pre-
sents a summary of a study whose goal was to provide a basic method to better estimate the eect of earthquake duration on
structural reliability using (1) an ultimate strength and a (2) low-cycle structural damage-based limit state function. The damage
model developed by Park and Ang was coupled with the theory of order statistics all within a Monte Carlo simulation framework
in order to estimate the probability of failure for hypothetical groups of structures. Structures were idealized using elasto-plastic
oscillators in order to simplify the analysis and make it general enough to compare with future or existing studies. A response
database was used to provide randomness beyond the number of time domain simulations initially performed. Existing suites of
ground motion time histories were scaled using linear response spectrum scaling for soil conditions using a well-known attenu-
ation relationship. This study is unique in that it allows variation in the peaks of the highly non-linear structural response without
actually performing time domain analyses, which are commonly employed in earthquake engineering. A simple measure was
introduced and termed the duration eect factor (DEFb) and is dened as the slope of a best-t line for multiple reliability indices
plotted against duration. The DEFb could help provide a means for comparison between earthquake duration studies, which has
otherwise been dicult.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Earthquake duration; Reliability index; Low-cycle limit state function; Ultimate deformation; Damage-based; Elasto-plastic oscillator

1. Introduction include numerous physical earthquake characteristics

For many years, the concept of response spectra has
played a signicant role in helping structural earth-
quake engineers design safer and more reliable build-
ings, bridges, and other structures. A response
spectrum expresses a peak response quantity (e.g. dis-
placement) for a linear SDOF structure having a speci-
ed damping ratio and structural period. Although
ultimate strength and deformation methods of seismic
design have been successful, in part due to conservative
approaches, the new paradigm of performance-based
design is resulting in an increased need for realistic
identication of failure mechanisms, particularly their
inclusion in the development of limit states for seismic
reliability analyses. In time, it will be necessary to


Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-970-491-6605; fax: +1-970-491-
7727.
E-mail address: jwv@engr.colostate.edu (J.W. van de Lindt).
0141-0296/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2004.05.017
such as earthquake duration.
Early studies determined some basic characteristics
of strong earthquake duration, e.g. the studies by
Housner [1], Trifunac and Brady [2], Vanmarcke and
Lai [3], Kawashima et al. [4], found that earthquake
duration was critical when quantitatively measuring the
damaging eect of strong ground motion on structures.
Later, Novikova and Trifunac [5], and Trifunac and
Novikova [6] further rened the denition of strong
ground motion duration in terms of earthquake magni-
tude, distance from the site to the earthquake epi-
center, site conditions, and site geometry.
Although ground motion studies have contributed
much to the knowledge database regarding structural
damage caused by earthquakes, many structural engin-
eering studies have also made signicant strides.
Suidan and Eubanks [7] investigated the cumulative
fatigue damage in seismic steel structures considering
two failure mechanisms: (1) A maximum single excur-
1586 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597
sion mechanism in which failures takes place when a
preset displacement level is exceeded by a single excur-
sion of the response; and (2) a fatigue failure mech-
anism in which the cumulative eect of a number of
the excursions in the structures response to earthquake
excitation exceeds a preset damage accumulation level.
Their results revealed that cumulative fatigue damage
is signicant in structures having structural periods at
the lower end of the medium period range of the design
earthquake spectra. They also concluded that the dam-
age may be estimated from absorbed hysteretic energy.
Jeong and Iwan [8] conrmed that the safety, or
reliability, of a structure may depend on more than just
the peak response. Specically, structural failure under
cyclic loading provides motivation for further study of
very low-cycle fatigue failure based on the time history
of the deformation, i.e. hysteresis. Damage accumu-
lates during the strong motion cycles, hence the use of
the response spectrum alone to specify a design input
ground motion neglects the eect of earthquake dur-
ation, i.e. cycling, and its potential damage to struc-
tures. They also found that the expected damage is
highly dependent on both the ductility of the response
and duration of the excitation. Rahnama and Manuel
[9] found that strength demands are not very sensitive
to strong motion duration, but concluded that earth-
quake duration should have a signicant eect on
cumulative damage measures.
Indicative in its name, performance-based seismic
design relies heavily on structural performance during
moderate to severe earthquakes. Performance must be
based on damage rather than collapse since one major
goal of performance-based design is to mitigate costly
damage. In order to begin the process of applying per-
formance-based seismic design, it is critical that design
code developers understand which earthquake para-
meters aect performance estimates enough that they
should be taken into account in the development of
their methodologies, and of course, their application.
One such ground motion parameter is earthquake dur-
ation. As discussed, many researches have focused on
this important topic over the last few decades, but vir-
tually none have examined the eect on modern mea-
sures of structural performance. The structural
reliability index, b, lends its generality well to the topic
of performance-based design, as well as to this study.
The objective of this study was to develop a general
oscillator-based procedure for quantifying the eect of
earthquake duration on structural reliability indices
using a low-cycle damage-based limit state. An ulti-
mate deformation-based limit state was also used for
comparative purposes. Earthquake duration is accoun-
ted for by developing a response database and combin-
ing it with an order statistic approach.
In order to achieve this objective an existing suite of
ground motion records was scaled using linear response
spectra scaling from the United States Geological Survey
Map (reproduced in ASCE [10]). Structures were idealized
as elasto-plastic (E-P) oscillators in order to (1) simplify
the computation and (2) allow generalization of the
results. Initially, the suites of E-P oscillators were excited
using each realization in a suite of ground motion records.
The resulting one-sided (i.e. positive) peaks for each
response were t to a Type III extreme value distribution
(Weibull). Then, treating the Weibull parameters of the E-
P response as random variables themselves, the theory of
order statistics was applied to model the probability distri-
bution of the mth highest peaks for the entire family of
ground motions. A Monte Carlo simulation (MCS)
framework was used to estimate failure probabilities and
the associated reliability indices. By varying the number
of trials in the statistical distribution for an order stat-
istic, the probability distributions for the mth highest dis-
tribution also varied. A limit state function was developed
from the Park and Ang [11] damage model which exploi-
ted the symmetry in the E-P oscillator hysteresis.
Because order statistics are relied upon as an integral
part of the procedure in this study, a brief review of
related previous studies is warranted. Amini and Trifunac
[12,13] extended the work of Cartwright and Longuet-
Higgins [14] for the largest peaks of a random function to
study the statistics of higher order peaks in the response of
a structure under earthquake excitation. They presented
their results for the expected and the most probable ampli-
tude of higher order peaks based on the assumptions that
the time histories are (1) statistically stationary and (2) the
peaks are statistically independent. Renement of Amini
and Trifunacs work by Gupta and Trifunac [15] lead to a
distribution for the amplitudes of the nth order peaks in a
total of N peaks of a random function. Gupta and Trifu-
nac [15] did not consider the correlation between the
ordered peaks in any realization of the process. More
recently, Basu et al. [16] proposed what they termed a
more rational approach based on ordered peak ampli-
tudes through the development of a digitally simulated
joint probability density function for the peaks in a
stationary Gaussian process. Their results showed that the
assumption of statistical independence of ordered peaks
gives reasonable estimates for the rst few orders of peaks.
Rosowsky and Bulleit [17] applied the theory of order
statistics in examining load duration eects in light-frame
wood structures. Following the results of Basu et al. [16],
the present study assumes that the assumption of peak
independence is valid for the highest four peaks of struc-
tural response during an earthquake.
2. Description of approach
2.1. Earthquake demand
Ground motions suites selected to be representative
of earthquakes for the US cities of Boston, Seattle, and
 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597 1587

Los Angeles were used to develop the earthquake Table 1

demand. The probabilities of occurrence for each of Damped response spectra (g) scaled for site category, SD (soil)
these suites of earthquake records were 2% and 10% in Probability Location Structural period (s)
50 years, corresponding to return periods of approxi- 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.5 1 2
mately 2475 and 475 years, respectively. Each ground
motion suite consisted of 10 time histories. The records 10% in 50 Boston 0.11 0.11 0.09 0.07 0.04 0.03
years Seattle 0.49 0.65 0.63 0.58 0.34 0.18
provided are for the soil type SB/C boundary, i.e. soft LA 0.52 0.75 0.89 0.78 0.58 0.34
rock. The spectral accelerations were adjusted to be rep- 2% in 50 Boston 0.34 0.31 0.27 0.22 0.14 0.08
resentative of soil conditions using the same method years Seattle 0.97 1.28 1.38 1.43 0.85 0.42
applied by Somerville et al. [18]. The adjustment was LA 0.67 1.03 1.24 1.34 1.02 0.56
accomplished using the empirical attenuation function
developed by Abrahamson and Silva [19]. For the
to use a mean target acceleration calculated from the
appropriate site-to-source distance and earthquake
target response spectra for the entire suite (10 earth-
magnitude, the ratio of soil to rock response spectra
quakes). The mean target accelerations for scaling the
were computed. Fig. 1 shows the rock and soil response
soft rock records to soil are presented in Table 1.
spectra for an arbitrarily selected magnitude and site-to-
Linear response spectrum scaling was used to scale the
source distance identied within the gure. The spectral
earthquake records for the six structural periods shown
acceleration at a structural period of 1 s can be modied
in Table 1. For a full explanation of response spectrum
from rock to soil by locating Tn 1 s on the abscissa
scaling the interested reader is referred to either
and determining the corresponding ordinate for each
Chopra [20] or Goh [21].
spectrum, i.e. soil and soft rock. The ratio of the ordi-
nates of the curves, e.g. 0.19 and 0.12 in this case, can be 2.2. Structural capacity
used as a multiplier to make this transition from rock to
soil for the response spectral acceleration. The E-P oscillator is the simplest hysteretic oscillator
Of course, because each earthquake in the 10-earth- used in structural dynamics but possesses many proper-
quake suite has a dierent magnitude and distance (see ties that lend themselves well to sensitivity investiga-
[18] for a full explanation of the technique), there tions such as the one presented here. However, it is an
would be 10 dierent multipliers. The target response idealization and the underlying assumptions must be
spectra for each earthquake ground motion for Boston, carefully scrutinized to ensure they do not taint the
Seattle, and Los Angeles were scaled using the afore- objective of the study at hand. The familiar load
mentioned approach. In codied design in the US, a deformation relationship for an E-P oscillator is shown
single spectral acceleration at each structural period is in Fig. 2. In Fig. 2, Qy represents the yield strength, k
formulated to be representative of a uniform seismic is the linear spring stiness, dy is the yield deformation,
hazard level. The 10 dierent earthquake ground and dmax represents the maximum deformation of a
motions scaled to dierent spectral accelerations were system during an earthquake.
not believed to be representative of uniform hazard The peaks of a Gaussian process have been shown to
and are likely to cause confusion. Hence, it is proposed be modeled well by the Rayleigh distribution [14].
Further, the response of a non-Gaussian process, such
as the peaks of structural response during earthquakes,
has been shown to be modeled well by a Weibull distri-

Fig. 1. Response spectra for an E.Q. having magnitude 6.5 and

a 20 km distance from site to epicenter. Fig. 2. Illustration of the elasto-plastic (E-P) hysteretic behavior.
1588 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597

bution [22]. This is somewhat logical since the Rayleigh

distribution is a special case of the Weibull distri-
bution, and a change in the shape parameter provides
signicant modeling exibility. The two-parameter
Weibull distribution was used in this study to model
the statistical distribution of the deformation response
peaks and has cumulative distribution function
n
x j o
F x 1  exp  1
k
where x is the random variable of interest and k and j
are the scale and shape parameters, respectively. In the
present study, k and j were treated as random vari-
ables in order to describe an entire family of earth-
quake response peaks. This family of response peaks
was felt to be representative of the suite of parent Fig. 3. Truncation of lognormal distribution for /.
earthquakes (i.e. suite of 10 earthquakes), discussed
earlier, from which they were derived. In order to do
this the form of the Weibull distribution shown in One major assumption of the modeling of the peaks
Eq. (1) can be re-written as of the response of the E-P oscillators was that overall
equilibrium remained approximately at zero. Highly
n
x ju o
F x 1  exp  2 non-linear responses such as those for an E-P oscillator
kh with low yield strength and/or low ductility did not
where h and u are random variables each having a tend to t the Weibull model well primarily because
mean of unity, and a standard deviation calculated there was a change in the equilibrium position for the
from the dataset. For the E-P deformation peaks both oscillator. However, it was felt that since the overall
h and u were found to t a lognormal distribution with objective of this study was to develop and apply a
95% condence using a K-S test [23]; hence a log- method to quantify the eect of ground motion dur-
normal model was felt to be adequate. ation on structural reliability, this would have limited
The lognormal distribution is dened on the interval impact on the logic underlying the conclusions. It was
[0,1]. For very small values of u the value of the cumu- felt that if the results for the weak and/or brittle oscil-
lative distribution function, F(x), in Eq. (2) becomes lators was similar to the results of the other oscillators,
very small and may cause numerical problems. It can i.e. there was no change in the trend, then this over-
also be reasoned that values outside of the original E-P sight could be tolerated within the present scope.
responses would contradict the seismic hazard analysis However, in order to apply this technique to highly
logic used in development of the ground motion suites non-linear oscillators, a method to account for these
[18]. Hence, the lower and upper tail of the lognormal response details should be employed.
distribution for h and u were truncated so that the mini-
mum and maximum h and u values were equal to the 2.3. Damage accumulation during earthquakes
minimum and maximum from the deformation response
There are many dierent damage indices in existence
peak data set. Mathematically, the new distribution,
[11,2528]. The present study uses a damage model
f(y), can be expressed as [24]
8 originally developed for reinforced concrete [11] that
<0 y < miny expresses damage as a linear combination of excessive
f y kf x miny  y < maxy 3 deformation and repeated cyclic loading. The damage
:
0 y  maxy index, D, can be expressed as

where dM w
D dE 5
du Qy du
1
k 4 where dM is the maximum deformation of the oscillator
F maxy  F miny
during an earthquake, du is the ultimate deformation of
Fig. 3 shows a two-sided truncation for the lognor- the oscillator under monotonic loading, Qy is the calcu-
mally distributed random variable u. Finally, the lated yield strength, dE is the incremental hysteretic
earthquake demand in terms of the peaks of the E-P energy, and w is the (experimentally determined) dam-
response can be expressed by Eq. (2) for each combi- age calibration parameter. Values of the damage index,
nation of E-P oscillator and suite of earthquakes. D, are such that D  1:0 signies collapse or total
 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597
damage, depending on the details of the calibration.
The model can be readily calibrated by setting D 1 at
failure for the experimental data set and solving for w.
However, in the present study, this will not be done
but rather several values of w will be assigned within
the suite of E-P oscillators in order to represent a
reasonable range of structures. In order to determine
the ultimate deformation, du, from an E-P oscillator,
one need only multiply the estimated yield deformatio-
n, dy, by its ductility factor, l, which gives
du ldy
Substitution of Eq. (6) into Eq. (5) provides an E-P
oscillator special case for the ParkAng damage model
dM w X k Fig. 4. PDF of the largest four peaks.
D Udi  dy di  dy Qy 7
ldy Qy ldy i1
where di is the deformation for the ith peak and k is
the number of peaks included in the analysis. The sym-
bol Uh represents the unit step function dened as
unity when the term in brackets is 0 and dened as
zero when the term in brackets is <0. The unit step
function is needed since it was assumed that no dam-
age is done unless the structure yields. From a high
cycle fatigue perspective this is not necessarily the case.
However, for the low-cycle damage model presented
here, this will be implemented. Notice that the unit step
function is not multiplied with the rst term in the
damage model. Ideally it should be, but in order to
maintain consistency with Park and Angs [11] original
formulation this was not done, hence some very small
damage accumulation may even occur in the elastic
range, but can be neglected. The present analysis focu-
ses on very low-cycle damage that the author assumes
to be k 4 in Eq. (7). Basu et al. [16] has shown that
the assumption of statistical independence for the rst
few peaks is a valid assumption. Hence the damage
accumulation is a function of the statistical distribution
of the deformation response peaks. In turn, the prob-
ability density function (PDF) of the mth highest peaks
can be expressed by applying the theory of order stat-
istics [29] as
n!
fm x fF xnm g1  F xnm f x
m  1!n  m!
where F(x) is the cumulative distribution function given
in Eq. (2) and f(x) is its corresponding PDF. Fig. 4 pre-
sents the PDFs for the 1st4th highest peaks from a
Weibull parent distribution whose parameters are
identied within the gure. The area under the curves
and to the right of the dashed line, as illustrated in
Fig. 4, can be interpreted as the probability of exceed-
ing six units (arbitrary in this case) of deformation
response. As the order of the peaks is increased, the
1589
6
area to the right of the dashed line, under each curve, is
reduced. Hence, only the rst four largest order peaks
are included for the present analysis. It was felt that the
inclusion of more than the four largest peaks would
require a joint distribution since correlation has been
shown to exist for more than a few peaks.
Numerical integration of these PDFs yields the
CDFs of the 1st4th highest peaks. It is important to
document one major assumption used in the present
analysis. The incremental hysteretic energy in the
ParkAng damage model was originally for the entire
hysteresis loop. The present formulation calibrates the
damage model parameter, w, in Eq. (7) for one-sided
peaks. This means that only the area within the rst
quadrant of the hysteresis curve was used to calibrate
the model. The symmetry of the E-P hysteresis makes
this possible, thus extension to other oscillators should
be done with caution.
2.4. Calculation of failure probabilities and reliability
indices
The probability of failure can be dened using the
damage model given in Eq. (7) as
Failure probability Pf Probability1  D < 0 9
or in terms of the E-P parameters and largest k one-
sided peaks as
" ( ) #
8 dM w X k
Pf P 1  Udi  dy di  dy Qy < 0
ldy Qy ldy i1
10
Hence, based on the knowledge of only the Weibull
parameters in Eq. (2), n, and m in Eq. (8), the distri-
bution for the mth highest response peaks during an
earthquake can be generated. The damage index, D,
can be readily calculated using Eq. (7) for k 4 given
a value of F(x) and its derivative f(x). Recall that h and
u were modeled as lognormal, thus, by randomly gen-
1590 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597
erating variates of the appropriate lognormal CDF and
holding n constant, the Pf can be calculated using
Eq. (10). This well known approach of using the
inverse of the CDF is known as Monte Carlo simula-
tion [23] and served as the framework for calculation
of the Pf in the present study. Then, the reliability
index can be determined as
b U1 f1  Pf g 11
where b U1 fhg is the inverse of the standard nor-
mal distribution function. However, the method pre-
sented to this point provides a means to determine the
reliability index for a single earthquake duration, and
requires extension to earthquakes of dierent duration.
2.5. Quantifying the eect of earthquake duration for
the E-P oscillator
Recall that the value n in Eq. (8) is the number of
trials, or the number of peaks during an earthquake in
this case. In general, a linear oscillator will oscillate at
its natural period of vibration regardless of the fre-
quency content of the excitation signal. This means, for
an earthquake of duration, d, a linear oscillator will
have d=Tn one-sided peaks (positive), where Tn is the
natural period of vibration of the linear oscillator.
However, for a non-linear hysteretic oscillator such as
the E-P oscillator, this number can vary signicantly
depending on the properties of the oscillator. One
characteristic of the E-P oscillator is that it can essen-
tially be described by two variables, Tn and Qy. Of
course, Qy must be expressed in units of force and so
some percentage of mg, where m is mass and g is grav-
ity, is convenient. Numerous earthquake ground
motion records from around the US were used to
excite E-P oscillators having dierent structural periods
and yield strengths in order to develop an E-P database
that relates the number of peaks for an E-P oscillator
to d=Tn for linear oscillators. In turn, this directly
relates to the earthquake duration, d. The relationship
between the number of peaks, n, for the E-P oscillators
and the earthquake duration was approximated using
linear regression. It should be noted that the scatter
was not considered in the present analysis, but could
be added in a much more extensive study, if desired.
Fig. 5 presents the relationship for E-P oscillators
with varying yield strengths having a natural period of
vibration, Tn 0:2 s. For each of the other ve (5)
structural periods presented in Table 1, similar relation-
ships exist. The abscissa (labeled NL) presents the num-
ber of peaks calculated for a linear oscillator as
described above and the ordinate (labeled NE-P) pro-
vides the number of peaks counted from the numerical
results for the E-P oscillator. It should be noted that the
ratio of the number of cycles for an E-P oscillator versus
an elastic oscillator is the slope of the regression lines.
Fig. 5. Illustration of linear regression of NEP versus NL at
Tn 0:2 s at seven dierent yield strength levels, Qy.
However, these lines do not pass through the origin and
thus the ratio can be represented in terms of a slope and
y-intercept of the regression line. Earthquake duration
can be varied within the analysis by changing the num-
ber of E-P peaks used to generate the statistical distri-
bution of the highest four (4) peaks, i.e. in Eq. (8).
3. Illustrative examples
3.1. Eect of earthquake duration on structural
reliability
Recall that the main objective of this study is to
develop and apply a logical procedure to assess the
eect of earthquake duration on structural reliability
estimates, particularly the structural reliability index, b.
In order to do this a suite of E-P oscillators, approxi-
mately representative of typical modern engineered
structures, was used in the analyses. The results of four
dierent reliability analyses (two dierent limit state
functions and two dierent seismic hazard levels) are
presented for the cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, and
Boston. The reliability analysis for each city was as
follows:
1. Low-cycle damage limit state with ground motion
suite corresponding to 10% probability of excee-
dance in 50 years, i.e. 475 year return period.
2. Ultimate strength limit state with ground motion
suite corresponding to 10% probability of excee-
dance in 50 years.
3. Low-cycle damage limit with ground motion suite
corresponding to 2% probability of exceedance in 50
years, i.e. 2475 year return period.
4. Ultimate strength limit state with ground motion
suite corresponding to 2% probability of exceedance
in 50 years.
 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597 1591

For each of the cases listed above, the ordered data from the resulting empirical CDFs for each earthquake
from smallest to largest was used to develop an empiri- duration and used to identify trends, i.e. slopes of b
cal CDF and is presented using a best-t line. A best-t versus earthquake duration. These percentiles corre-
line was used because it was felt that at this stage any spond to the mean, the mean plus one standard devi-
t does not appear to be strong in the tails of the dis- ation, and the mean plus two standard deviations. As
tribution, and could result in erroneous conclusions. In mentioned earlier, the DEFb is introduced as a simple
order to quantify the eect of earthquake duration on measure to gage the eect of earthquake duration.
the structural reliability index the denition of a new Thus, as DEFb increases, the slopes of lines become
parameter is proposed. Assuming one has knowledge steeper at increasing duration. The dashed lines, shown
of the reliability index, b, at more than one earthquake in Fig. 7, illustrate the connection between the two
duration, D, the duration eect factor (DEFb) can be gures for the 50th percentile case. As expected, the
expressed as the slope of a best-t line through those general trend is a reduction in the reliability indices as
points. Mathematically, the earthquake duration increases. The structural reli-
abilities for ground motion suites in Los Angeles hav-
db
DEFb  12 ing 10% probability of occurrence in 50 years are
dD generally higher than the 2% probability of occurrence
where the negative sign in Eq. (12) is included since the in 50 years suites. The reliability indices are somewhat
slope is typically negative with increasing duration. In low, many even negative, in Fig. 7. Only one thousand
addition, the DEFb was multiplied with 1000, to make simulations were performed at each earthquake dur-
it a reasonable sized number for discussion. This ation, e.g. 45 s. Single analyses were performed for
approach to quantifying the eect of duration will be stronger more ductile oscillators and the trend was the
used to draw conclusions for the three cities in this same when the reliability indices were higher. Thus, it
study. Table 2 presents the suite of 16 E-P oscillators was reasoned that higher reliability indices, say 05,
designed to represent modern engineered buildings. A would only add computation time and not provide
detailed sensitivity analysis of the reliability index to insight into the development of the method. One must
each structural and damage model parameter was per- also consider that a very large earthquake having a
formed and can be found in [22]. return period of almost 2500 years has occurred and
the reliability indices are computed, given that the
3.2. Los Angeles earthquake has occurred. Their true reliability indices,
when the probability of occurrence of such an earth-
The leftmost gure in Fig. 7 presents the reliability quake is also accounted for, would be much higher.
index for the structural suite at the Los Angeles site for For instance, as illustrated in Figs. 7 and 8, the best-
an earthquake of 50 s in duration. This procedure was t lines, representing the reliability indices for the Los
repeated for earthquakes having durations of 3090 s Angeles ground motion suite having 10% probability of
at intervals of 5 s using the procedure previously out- occurrence stay above the best-t lines for 2% prob-
lined and summarized in Fig. 6. Then, three selected ability of occurrence. This is logical since ground
percentiles, i.e. 50th, 84th, and 98th, were extracted motions having return periods of 2475 years are expec-
ted to cause signicantly more damage. The resulting
DEFb indicates that low-cycle damage models may
Table 2
Designed suite of 16 E-P oscillators have steeper slopes at higher percentiles, i.e. going
from 50th to 84th for the low-cycle limit state analysis.
Structure no. Tn (s) Qy l w
However, this is not the case for the ultimate strength
1 0.2 0.2 mg 2 0.6 models corresponding to a 10% probability of occur-
2 0.2 0.2 mg 2 0.2 rence.
3 0.2 0.2 mg 6 0.6
4 0.2 0.2 mg 6 0.2
5 0.2 0.8 mg 2 0.6 3.3. Seattle
6 0.2 0.8 mg 2 0.2
7 0.2 0.8 mg 6 0.6 The procedure described for the Los Angeles analy-
8 0.2 0.8 mg 6 0.2 sis was repeated for the city of Seattle analysis. In gen-
9 1 0.2 mg 2 0.6
eral, the same suite of structures located in Seattle have
10 1 0.2 mg 2 0.2
11 1 0.2 mg 6 0.6 higher reliability indices than Los Angeles. Of course,
12 1 0.2 mg 6 0.2 the structures located in LA are, in general, designed to
13 1 0.8 mg 2 0.6 resist larger spectral acceleration than structures in
14 1 0.8 mg 2 0.2 Seattle, hence the exact same structures would prob-
15 1 0.8 mg 6 0.6
ably not be found in Seattle. This change in reliability
16 1 0.8 mg 6 0.2
is primarily a function of the ground motion suites and
1592 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597
Fig. 6. Flowchart summarizing the procedure to calculate the eect of earthquake duration on structural reliability.
their scaled spectral accelerations found in Table 1.
The results of the Seattle analysis are presented in
Figs. 9 and 10. Similar trends, as discussed in Los
Angeles, can be found.
3.4. Boston
The same procedure described previously was used
for the city of Boston analysis. The same suite of struc-
tures assumed to be located in Boston exhibited, in
general, higher reliability levels than the other cities.
However, many of the actual structures located in
Boston are older and would not exhibit ductile beha-
vior and high yield strengths compared to the
designed modern engineered structural suite. In fact,
many of the unreinforced masonry structures would
not survive earthquakes having magnitudes and dura-
tions of those used in this study. Of course, the under-
lying ground motion parameters and the scaled spectral
accelerations in the city of Boston play a major role in
contributing to the higher reliability indices, as pre-
sented in Figs. 11 and 12. The trends were similar to
those of the Seattle analysis. It should be noted that
the best-t lines for the two limit states corresponding
to 10% probability of exceedance, intersect at an earth-
quake duration of approximately 75 s for 98th percen-
tile case. In order to better estimate the structural
reliability, a future study that uses a more designed
structure customized for the city of Boston is recom-
mended. This could be a suite of structures with lower
values of ductility and possibly lower yield strengths
which would be more representative of the existing
building populations in older cities. However, this was
 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597 1593

Fig. 7. Reliability index as a function of duration for structural suite in Los Angeles.

Fig. 8. The 84th and 98th percentiles of reliability index for the Los Angeles analysis.
1594 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597

Fig. 9. Reliability index as a function of duration for the Seattle analysis.

Fig. 10. The 84th and 98th percentiles of reliability index for the Seattle analysis.
 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597 1595

Fig. 11. Reliability index as a function of duration for the Boston analysis.

Fig. 12. The 84th and 98th percentiles of reliability index for the Boston analysis.
1596 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597
Table 3
Duration eect factors (DEFb 1000)
City Percentile from empirical CDF of b
50 84
Low-cycle Ultimate Low-cycle
a b
10/50 2/50 10/50 2/50 10/50
Los Angeles 5.6 9.3 11.1 6.9 11.2
Seattle 15.1 1.6 11.7 5.5 13.8
Boston 9.4 9.6 8.6 11.4 9 8.8
a
10% probability of exceedance in 50 years.
b
2% probability of exceedance in 50 years.
felt to be beyond the scope of this initial study and
would not alter the general conclusion which are the
primary objective here. In closure, duration eect fac-
tors, DEFb, for the cities of Los Angeles, Seattle and
Boston are presented in Table 3.
4. Summary and conclusions
In order to quantify the eect of earthquake duration
on structural reliability a procedure that combines order
statistics and non-linear dynamics was used. Ultimate
strength and low-cycle structural damage limit states
were applied within a MCS framework in order to esti-
mate the probability of failure for a suite of idealized
structures. The study is unique in that it allows vari-
ation in the peaks of the highly non-linear structural
model without actually performing time domain analy-
ses, through the development and use of an E-P oscil-
lator database. Although previous studies have
investigated the use of order statistics to determine the
peak kinematics of earthquakes, this is the rst study to
combine an order statistic approach with a very low-
cycle damage limit state. In addition, the study pre-
sented herein models the statistical parameters of the
response peaks as random variables themselves. This
extension to parametric modeling of the structural
response peaks allows MCS to be applied and, in turn,
those values used as input to the distribution of the
order statistics essentially producing an innite number
of order statistic distributions. In a heuristic sense, this
large randomness models earthquake response well
since so much uncertainty exists in the ground motion
itself. This approach also allows one to use virtually any
type of limit state provided it is somehow dependent on
the peak, or extremes, of the structural response.
Several conclusions were reached as a direct result of
this study:
1. Earthquake duration has a signicant eect on
structural reliability and should be considered to the
degree possible when targeting a b for performance-
based seismic design approaches, or when calibrat-
ing load and resistance factor design (LRFD) codes.
98
Ultimate Low-cycle Ultimate
2/50 10/50 2/50 10/50 2/50 10/50 2/50
13.2 8.7 9.7 13.5 14.8 7.8 10.9
8.1 9.6 7.6 13.3 10.8 8.8 8.4
8.1 7.6 8.9 8.5 7.9 6
2. A duration eect factor, DEFb, has been proposed
and appears to be a reasonable and logical measure
of the eect of a parameter, e.g. duration on
reliability. The DEFb may be able to provide a
means for comparison between earthquake duration
studies, which has otherwise been dicult.
3. The method described herein uses time domain
analysis initially. Once response peaks are analyzed,
the reliability analysis used in the present study and
the Monte Carlo simulations will not require the
further use of the time histories. If a reasonably
sized database could be developed it might be poss-
ible to perform structure and structural group-
specic reliability analyses simply as a function of
location and a few structural parameters.
References
[1] Housner GW. Intensity of ground motion shaking near the
causative fault. Proceedings of the Third WCEE, Auckland,
New Zealand, vol. 1. 1965, p. 94109.
[2] Trifunac MD, Brady AG. A study of the duration of strong earth-
quake ground motion. Bull Seismol Soc Am 1975;65(3):581626.
[3] Vanmarcke EH, Lai S-S. Strong motion duration and RMS
amplitude of earthquake records. BSSA 1980;70(4).
[4] Kawashima K, Aizawa K, Takahashi K. Duration of strong
motion acceleration records. Proc JSCE 1985;I(4):1618.
[5] Novikova EI, Trifunac MD. Duration of ground motion in terms
of earthquake magnitude, epicentral distance, site conditions and
site geometry. Earthquake Eng Struct Dyn 1994;23:102343.
[6] Trifunac MD, Novikova EI. Duration of earthquake fault motion
in California. Earthquake Eng Struct Dyn 1995;24:78199.
[7] Suidan MT, Eubanks RA. Cumulative fatigue damage in seismic
structures. J Struct Div Proc ASCE 1973;99:92343.
[8] Jeong GD, Iwan WD. The eect of earthquake duration on the
damage of structures. Earthquake Eng Struct Dyn 1988;16:
120111.
[9] Rahnama M, Manuel L. The eects of strong motion on seismic
demands. Proceedings of the Eleventh World Conference on
Earthquake Engineering, Paper No. 924, England.
[10] ASCE 7-98. Minimum design loads for buildings and other
structures. American Society of Civil Engineers, New York, NY.
2000.
[11] Park YJ, Ang AH. Mechanistic seismic damage model for rein-
forced concrete. J Struct Eng 1985;111(4):72239.
 J.W. van de Lindt, G.-H. Goh / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 15851597
[12] Amini A, Trifunac MD. Distribution of peaks in earthquake
response. J Eng Mech Div ASCE 1981;107(EM1):20727.
[13] Amini A, Trifunac MD. Statistical extension of response spec-
trum superposition. Soil Dyn Earthquake Eng 1985;4(2):5463.
[14] Cartwright DE, Longuet-Higgins MS. The statistical distribution
of maxima of a random function. Proc R Soc Lond 1956;
A237:21232.
[15] Gupta ID, Trifunac MD. Order statistics of peaks in earthquake
response. J Eng Mech Div ASCE 1988;114(10):160527.
[16] Basu B, Gupta VK, Kundu D. Ordered peak statistics through
digital simulation. Earthquake Eng Struct Dyn 1996;25:106173.
[17] Rosowsky DV, Bulleit WM. Another look at load duration
eects in wood. J Struct Eng 2002;128(6):8248.
[18] Somerville P, Smith N, Punyamurthula S, Sun J. Development
of ground motion time histories for phase 2 of the FEMA/SAC
steel project. SAC Background Document Series Final Report,
Sacramento, CA; 1997.
[19] Abrahamson NA, Silva WJ. Empirical response spectral attenu-
ation relations for shallow crustal earthquakes. Seismol Res Lett
1997;8(1).
[20] Chopra A. Dynamics of structures: theory and applications to
earthquake engineering, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-
Hall; 2001.
1597
[21] Goh GH. Earthquake duration eects on very-low cycle damage
estimates. MS thesis, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department, Michigan Technological University, December;
2002.
[22] Niedzwecki JM, van de Lindt JW, Gage JH, Teigen PS. Design
estimates of surface wave interaction with compliant deepwater
platforms. Ocean Eng 2000;27:86788.
[23] Ayyub BM, MaCuen RH. Probability, statistics, and reliability
for engineers. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press LLC; 1997.
[24] Benjamin JR, Cornell CA. Probability, statistics, and decision
for civil engineers. New York, NY: McGraw Hill; 1970.
[25] Krawinkler H, Zohrei M. Cumulative damage in steel structures
subjected to earthquake ground motions. Comput Struct
1983;16(14):53141.
[26] Park YJ, Ang HS, Wen YK. Seismic damage analysis of rein-
forced concrete buildings. J Struct Eng 1985;111(4):74057.
[27] Darwin D, Nmai CK. Energy dissipation in RC beams under
cyclic load. J Struct Eng 1986;112(8):182946.
[28] Chai YH, Romstad KM, Bird SM. Energy-based linear damage
model for high-intensity seismic loading. J Struct Eng 1995;
121(5):85764.
[29] Madsen HO, Krenk S, Lind NC. Methods of structural safety.
Englewood Clis, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc; 1986.