Graduate researcher: Andrew Seifried
Response spectrum matching involves non-uniform manipulation of a recorded acceleration time history to obtain a ground motion with a specified target response spectrum. This procedure is popular in engineering design practice because the variance of the resulting structural response from dynamic analyses for various earthquake records is reduced, enabling an estimate of the mean response to be found with fewer analyses than with other techniques. A potential shortcoming of matching is bias in the mean response estimate. This research aims to extend previous studies of spectrum matching, to consider a broader range of building types and matching techniques, and develop new criteria to analyze how appropriate the resulting manipulated ground motions are for structural engineering analysis.