Maximum Structural Response to Seismic Excitations

Abstract

A method is presented by which a least favorable structural response can be estimated to the excitation of nondeterministic nature such as earthquake acceleration. Under the assumption that a fair amount of information on the modulus of the Fourier transform of the excitation makes it possible to select an envelope of the modulus, the present approach estiamtes a least favorable structural response smaller than that based on a selected value of the total energy of the excitation. A probabilistic aspect of such an approach is also analyzed.