Selection of Ground Motion Intensity Measures in Fragility Analysis of a Mega-Scale Steel Frame Structure at Separate Limit States: A Case Study

Selecting an appropriate ground motion intensity measure (IM) to estimate the aleatory uncertainty produced by ground motion variability is the first and crucial step in fragility analysis. The choice of IM is influenced not only by the structural system type itself but also by the limit state of the structural damage. In this study, an investigation of the selection of IM in fragility analysis with respect to different limit states is developed for a 48-story mega-scale steel frame structure with buckling restrained braces. A comparative study of the efficiency of 27 IMs is conducted at four structural damage limit states, i.e., negligible, light, moderate, and severe, through the lognormal standard deviation estimated in fragility equations. In addition, for the purpose of considering the influence of different earthquake characteristics, two completely different sets of ground motions are selected, namely near-field pulse-like and far-field earthquakes. The research shows that the ground motion characteristics and structural damage limit states have nonnegligible effects on the flexibility of intensity measures. For combination-type IMs, the number of combined terms and the combined power index have a significant impact on their performance; thus, an optimized dual-parameter combination-type intensity measure is recommended.

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