Selection of hazard-consistent ground motions for risk-based analyses of structures

In seismic risk analysis, probabilistic seismic demand analysis (PSDA) is required to determine the probability distribution of structural seismic responses. One of the key steps in PSDA is to select a suite of ground motions that are consistent with seismic hazards at a target site. Current methods for selecting hazard-consistent ground motions only achieve consistency at one or several predefined periods and choose several discrete intensity levels to consider uncertainty of ground motions. To avoid drawbacks of the current methods, this study proposes a novel method for selecting hazard-consistent ground motions. In this method, a scenario earthquake set for ground motion selection is firstly obtained from seismic hazard disaggregation to a hazard level corresponding to a very small value of spectral acceleration at a specific period. Then, a suite of random target response spectra that are consistent with target site seismic hazards are simulated based on the scenario earthquake set. Finally, one suite of hazard-consistent ground motions are selected from a ground motion database. Through a numerical example, this study concludes, a suite of selected ground motions using the proposed method presents very good consistency with the target site seismic hazards. Since hazard-consistent ground motions selected using the proposed method do not depend on the building information, they can be used to accurately perform PSDA of any building and accurately predict structural seismic responses.