ISSARS: An integrated software environment for structure-specific earthquake ground motion selection

Current practice enables the design and assessment of structures in earthquake prone areas by performing time history analysis with the use of appropriately selected strong ground motions. This study presents a Matlab-based software environment, which is integrated with a finite element analysis package, and aims to improve the efficiency of earthquake ground motion selection by accounting for the variability of critical structural response quantities. This additional selection criterion, which is tailored to the specific structure studied, leads to more reliable estimates of the mean structural response quantities used in design, while fulfils the criteria already prescribed by the European and US seismic codes and guidelines. To demonstrate the applicability of the software environment developed, an existing irregular, multi-storey, reinforced concrete building is studied for a wide range of seismic scenarios. The results highlight the applicability of the software developed and the benefits of applying a structure-specific criterion in the process of selecting suites of earthquake motions for the seismic design and assessment.