Advanced Materials Research Vols 255-260 (2011) pp 2330-2334 Online: 2011-05-31

© (2011) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland

doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.255-260.2330

Influence of Earthquake Attack Angle on Seismic Demands for

Structures under Bi-directional Ground Motions

Yu Zhang a, Quanwang Li band Jiansheng Fan c

Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China
a
foreveranthem@126.com,b li_quanwang@tsinghua.edu.cn, cfanjsh@tsinghua.edu.cn

Key words: Seismic response; uncertainty; attack angle of earthquake excitation; bi-directional
ground motions; modification factor

Abstract. The earthquake may attack the structural building from any angle, but in current seismic
design codes, this type of uncertainty is seldom accounted. The uncertainty associated with the
direction of earthquake excitation was considered in this paper, and its effect on structural responses
was investigated. For this purpose, a simple 3-dimensional model with symmetric plan was
established, which had fundamental periods ranged from 0.1s to 5.0s, and was subjected to a set of
30 ground motion pairs for which both linear and nonlinear time history analyses were performed.
Analyzing results showed that, on average, the elastic roof acceleration is 32% underestimated, and
the inelastic roof displacement is 18% underestimated if the variation of earthquake excitation
direction is not consider. Recognizing this, a modification factor for the seismic demand was
proposed thorough a statistical analysis, which guarantees a probability of 95% design safety

Introduction
The earthquake ground motion is consisted of three orthogonal components. However, it is still
unclear as to how much of a role the attack angle has on the estimation of demands. Several seismic
design specifications prescribe the combination method to take the bi-directional effect into
considerations, including the Uniform Building Code (UBC) [1], AASHTO Standard Specifications
[2], ATC-32 [3] and Eurocode 8 [4]. ISO 3010 [5] prescribed that the total seismic response, R is
obtained from the seismic response due to x-direction shaking (Rx) and the seismic response due to
y-directional shaking (Ry) as follow:

R = Rx2 + 2ε Rx Ry + Ry 2 . (1)
Where ε is a coefficient empirically taken as 0 to 0.3. If ε = 0, Eq.(1) is converted as the
combination rule of Square Root of Sum of Squares (SRSS).
One of the earliest investigations into determining the critical angle of response due to seismic
load was done by Wilson et al. [6] in an effort to display the shortcomings of the 100%-30% and
100%-40% combination rules. Fernandez-Davila et at.[7] compared the 100%-30% combination
rule and the SRSS rule when ground motions were applied at various attack angles. Khoshnoudian
and Poursha [8] evaluated the elastic and inelastic response of structures. However, it is not clear
which combination rule is appropriate to obtain the total response of the structure, and how large the
structural response would be when pairs of ground motions whose orthogonal earthquake
components are independent are applied at various attack angles[9,10,11]. The purpose of this study
is to investigate the accuracy of the SRSS rule in determining the maximum elastic and inelastic
structural responses, and propose a modification factor to the SRSS rule based on the statistical
analysis.

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 Advanced Materials Research Vols. 255-260 2331

Structural model and ground motions

To focus on the effect of directional uncertainty of ground motions, the structure is simply
modeled as a single-story structure as shown in Fig. 1a. By changing the height of the structure, the
fundamental vibration period of the structural model is varied from 0.1s to 5s. The damping ratio is
5%. Both elastic and inelastic material responses are considered in this analysis. To model the
coupling of bending behaviors in two directions, as shown in Fig. 1b, fiber section model is adopted
to model the bending behavior of the column section.
y
x
yielding in tension

yielding in compression

（a） （b）

Fig. 1 Model of structure under bi-directional ground motion

30 pairs of ground motions in two perpendicular directions were used to compute the structural
responses. These ground motions come from the earthquake database of PEER. To consider the
effect of directional uncertainty of ground motion, the acceleration waveforms for arbitrary direction
were obtained by rotating original waveforms every 15 degrees between 0 and 180 degree.

Definition of modification factor

In elastic range, the internal forces are usually designer’s concern; when material yields, the
performance of the structure is often reflected by deformation-related indices. Therefore, in this
study, the structural response indices are distinguished between elastic range and inelastic range.
Elastic range.
Bi-lateral acceleration response (BAR).Suppose the pair of earthquake ground motions attacks
the structure separately, the maximum acceleration response in x direction due to the excitation of
one earthquake ground motion of the pair along the x-axis, ARx,1, is computed, and the maximum
acceleration response in y direction due to the excitation of the other earthquake ground motion of
the pair along the y-axis, ARy,2, is computed. Similarly, ARy,1 and ARx,2 are also obtained, the Bi-
lateral Acceleration Response (BAR) is then computed according to the SRSS rule:

BAR = max ( ARx ,12 + ARy ,2 2 , ARx ,2 2 + ARy ,12 ) (2)

Real Acceleration Response (RAR).The Real Acceleration Response (RAR) is computed by:

 
θ  t

(
RAR = max  max ARx ,t 2 + ARy ,t 2 


) (3)

Where ARx,t and ARy,t are the acceleration responses of the structural model at time t in x and y
directions respectively.
Modification factor.The modification factor considering the variation of the attack angle of
earthquake excitation is:

RAR
ξe = (4)
BAR
Inelastic range. In inelastic range, the structural response indices considered are Bi-lateral
Displacement Response (BDR) and Real Displacement Response (RDR).Similar to BAR and RAR,
they are defined as:
2332 Advances in Civil Engineering, CEBM 2011

BDR = max ( DRx ,12 + DRy ,2 2 , DRx ,2 2 + DRy ,12 ) (5)

 
RDR = max  max DRx ,t 2 + DRy ,t 2 
θ  t



( )
(6)
Where the meaning of DRx, DRy, DRx,t and DRy,t can be understood by referring to the description
of ARx, ARy, ARx,t and ARy,t in the forgoing section.
To describe the yielding degree of the structure model, the ductility factors of the displacement
response (DR) for any attack angle, and of BDR and RDR are defined:

DR BDR RDR
µD = µB = µR = (7)
Dy Dy Dy
Where Dy is the displacement at which structural yielding occurs.
Finally, the modification factor considering the variation of the attack angle is:

µR
ξi = (8)
µB
Probabilistic distribution of modification factor. The structural response, in seismic reliability
analysis, is often described by lognormal distribution [12], thus the cumulative distribution function
of the modification factor is:

 ln (ξ cr ) − λ 
P[ξ ≤ ξ cr ] = Φ 
 ε  (9)
Where Φ(•) is the cumulative distribution function of Gaussian distribution, λ and ε are the
logarithmic mean and logarithmic standard deviation of random variable ξ . They are obtained by:

 Var (ξ )  1 2
ε = ln 1 + 2  , λ = ln ( E (ξ ) ) − ε (10)
 E (ξ )  2
Where Var(ξ) is the variance in ξ samples and E(ξ) is the mean value of ξ samples.
No.11 No.18
y y
0.9
0.9 0.7
0.8 0.60.6
Acceleration (g)

MBAR MBAR
Acceleration (g)

0.7
0 0.5 0
0.6
加速度反应(g)
加速度反应(g)

0.6
15 15
0.5 30 1s 0.40.4 30
0.4 45 x 0.3 45 1s x
0.3
0.3 60 2s 60 2s
75 4s 3s 0.20.2 75
0.2
90
0.1
904s 3s
0.1
5s 5s
0 0
0 0
00 11 22
周期（秒）
33 44 55 0
0 1
1 2
2 33 44 55
周期（秒）
Period (s) Period (s)

Fig. 2 Comparison between BAR (dashed) and RAR and

the maximum response direction of RAR (right)

Analysis Results
The elastic and inelastic structural responses were computed using OPENSEES [13].
Elastic range. Time history analyses of the structure were performed under the excitations of 30
pairs of earthquake ground motions. Firstly, BARs are obtained, then we changed the attack angles
for 0 to 180 degree by an amount of 15 degree, so that RARs were obtained. The roof accelerations
 Advanced Materials Research Vols. 255-260 2333

of the structure under 2 of the 30 pairs are presented in Fig. 2. Significant difference can be seen in
the roof acceleration when the earthquake excitation attacks the structure from different angles, and
the maximum accelerations among them were the RAR, plotted by the bold line in the Figure. The
BARs were also plotted in Fig. 2, as seen in the bold dashed curve. The maximum response
directions for each natural period were also shown in the figure to the right.
Fig. 3a shows the modification factors for all the natural period under the 30 pairs. From the
statistic analysis, the mean and standard deviation of the amplification factor, Var(ξ) and E(ξ), are
obtained. The values of modification factor to guarantee a level of 95% safety are calculated
according to Eq. (10) and shown in the figure as the bold dashed line.
1.11.5
1.051.5
Modification factor

95％ Confidence level

Modification factor
1.45

1.01.4 1.001.4
双向反应增强系数

双向反应增大系数
1.35

0.91.3 mean 0.921.3

1.25
0.81.2 0.901.2
1.15
0.71.1 0.851.1
1.05
0.6 1
0
0
0.5 1
1
1.5 2
2
2.5 3
3
3.5 4
4
4.5 5
5 0.80 1
周期（秒）
00 0 1
11 2
2周期（秒）
2
3
33 4
4 4 5
5 5
(a) Elastic (b) Inelastic
Fig. 3 Statistical results of modification factor (ξ) of elastic structural systems

The mean value of ξ is approximately 0.68, and keeps almost constant with the variation of
natural period. The line with 95% confidence level, as a whole, is below 0.85.
Inelastic range. If the structure goes into nonlinear range, the seismic response is well reflected by
the displacement. The structural ductility demand for 2 of the 30 pais are presented in Fig. 4. Larger
difference than that for roof acceleration can be seen, implying the effects of attack angle on the
structural behavior become larger when the structure yields. µR was plotted in the bold curve in the
Figure. The µB was also plot in Fig. 4, as seen in the bold dashed curve. The maximum response
directions for different natural period were also shown in the figures to the right.

No.11 No.18
y y
8 6
Ductility factor
Ductility factor

6
4
1s
4
Duc-

x x
Duc-

1s
2s 2 2s
2 4s 3s 4s 3s
0 5s 0 5s
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 0 1 12 23 34 45 5
周 期
Period 周期（秒
Period
Period (s) Period (s)

Fig. 4 Comparison between BDR (dashed) and RDR and

the maximum response direction of RDR (right)

Fig. 3b shows the mean values of ξ. The values of modification factor to guarantee a level of
95% safety are calculated according to Eq. (10) and shown in the figure as the bold dashed line. The
mean value of ξ is approximately 0.86, and keeps almost constant with the variation of natural
period.

Conclusions
The following conclusions can be drawn:
Due to the low correlation between the two horizontal earthquake components, the variation of
attack angle has great impact on the response of the plan-symmetric structural model, especially in
inelastic range.
2334 Advances in Civil Engineering, CEBM 2011

The SRSS combination rule prescribed by some codes between the effects due to the application
of the seismic action along two horizontal orthogonal directions is conservative for the estimation of
elastic behavior. And a modification of 85% to the SRSS rule can guarantees a safety level of 95%.
The SRSS combination rule is also conservative for the estimation of inelastic behavior. The
SRSS rule guarantees a safety level of 95% for inelastic behavior.

Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China under grants
50708052 and 90815006. These supports are gratefully acknowledged.

References
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[4] European Committee for Standardization 1996. Eurocode 8.
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Advances in Civil Engineering, CEBM 2011
10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.255-260

Influence of Earthquake Attack Angle on Seismic Demands for Structures under Bi-Directional
Ground Motions
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