Critical Excitation Methods in Earthquake Engineering







Preface

There are a variety of buildings in a city. Each building has its own natural period and

its original structural properties. When an earthquake occurs, a variety of ground motions

are induced in the city. The combination of the building natural period with the predominant

period of the induced ground motion may lead to disastrous phenomena in the city.

Many past earthquake observations demonstrated such phenomena. Once a big earthquake

occurs, some building codes are upgraded. However, it is true that this repetition never

resolves all the issues and new damage problems occur even recently. In order to overcome

this problem, a new paradigm has to be posed. To the author’s knowledge, the concept

of “critical excitation” and the structural design based on this concept can become one of

such new paradigms.


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