Generation of simulated earthquake motions considering actual earthquake phase and multiple target response spectra

Abstract

Abstract Simulated earthquake motions whose response spectrums meet the multi‐target response spectrums are often used while designing earthquake resistant nuclear power plant facilities. Therefore, it is advantageous to utilize simulated ground motions with phase characteristics of actual earthquake ground motions in the design of nuclear power plant facilities. Several methods exist for the generation of these motions. However, these methods cannot strictly maintain phase properties of the simulated earthquake motions. A method to generate simulated earthquake motions that meets both the multi‐target response spectrum and phase property requirements does not exist. This study proposes a novel method for the generation of simulated earthquake motions considering actual earthquake phase properties and multiple target response spectra. This method is equivalent to the modal iterative error correction method, which is effective for solving inverse problems with strong discontinuities. Therefore, this study proposes an improvement of this method for spectral fitting. The outline and details of the method are described and the results of experiments performed to validate the accuracy of the method are presented.

Keywords

• modal iterative error correction
• phase property
• response spectrum
• simulated earthquake motion