Unique Method for Generating Design Earthquake Time Histories

A method has been developed which takes a seed earthquake time history and modifies it to produce given design response spectra. It is a multi-step process with an initial scaling step and then multiple refinement steps. It is unique in the fact that both the acceleration and displacement response spectra are considered when performing the fit (which primarily improves the low frequency acceleration response spectrum accuracy). Additionally, no matrix inversion is needed. The features include encouraging the code acceleration, velocity, and displacement ratios and attempting to fit the pseudo velocity response spectrum. Also, “smoothing” is done to transition the modified time history to the seed time history at its start and end. This is done in the time history regions below a cumulative energy of 5% and above a cumulative energy of 95%. Finally, the modified acceleration, velocity, and displacement time histories are adjusted to start and end with an amplitude of zero (using Fourier transform techniques for integration).