Estimation Accuracy of Absolute Maximum Elasto-Plastic Displacements of MDOF Oscillators Based on a Modal Combination Rule With Post-Yielding Modal Properties and Linear Response Spectrum Values

Taniguchi, et al. [1] developed an analytical method for evaluating the absolute maximum elasto-plastic displacements of multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) oscillators under the action of base excitation based on a modal combination. Its essence is that 1) modal frequencies, shapes and damping during yielding of any member of the MDOF oscillators are readily specified by the modal analysis with the secondary stiffness of the members being yielded, 2) assuming that a bilinear hysteresis may describe the force-displacement relationship of each mode, an equivalently linearized system consisting of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) oscillator is introduced to approximate the absolute maximum elasto-plastic displacement of each mode, 3) the absolute maximum elasto-plastic displacement of the MDOF oscillator is evaluated by the Square Root of Sum of Squares rule (SRSS-rule) by combining the maximum elasto-plastic displacement of each mode approximated by the proposed equivalently linearized system. This study first provides small modification in the equivalently linearized system. Then, employing a couple of MDOF oscillators whose spring at arbitrary storey may yield and an accelerogram, the maximum elasto-plastic displacement of the MDOF oscillator is calculated by the proposed method and is compared with that computed by the time history analysis. Their comparison suggests that the proposed method can reasonably evaluate the absolute maximum elasto-plastic displacement of the MDOF oscillator subjected to earthquake excitation as the conventional SRSS-rule does that for the linear MDOF oscillators.