Earthquake responses of RC moment frames subjected to near‐fault ground motions

Abstract There are three objectives in this paper. The first objective is to compare the dynamic behaviour of a reinforced concrete building structure subjected to near‐fault and far‐field ground motions. A twelve‐storey and a five‐storey reinforced concrete building with moment resisting frames were selected in this study. The Chi‐Chi earthquake was selected as a first set in this study to test near‐fault earthquake characteristics. Further, another earthquake record of an event at the same site was selected to test the far‐field earthquake characteristics for comparison. Through nonlinear time history analyses, the results show that the near‐fault earthquake results in much more damage than the far‐field earthquake. The second objective of this paper is to compare the predictions for ductility demand by the nonlinear time history analyses with those obtained by the pushover analysis procedure. The third objective is to explore the parameters that will more significantly affect the the building structure's dynamic response characteristics of base shear reduction and displacement amplification. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.