Selection of appropriate intensity measure for collapse capacity prediction of low to mid-rise steel special moment resisting frames

A parameter that quantitatively represents the strength of a ground motion is called Intensity Measure (IM). The value of an IM for a given hazard level is the output parameter of Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) which is used in structural seismic analysis. In other words, an intensity measure is a link between PSHA and structural seismic analysis. The main desirable features of an appropriate IM are efficiency and sufficiency. The importance of using an appropriate IM is that the seismic performance assessment of structures can be performed more realistically. In this study, the performance of different scalar IMs to predict the collapse capacity of low to mid-rise steel Special Moment Resisting Frames (SMRFs) was evaluated. For this purpose, 3, 6 and 9-story steel SMRFs designed for the SAC project were simulated by OpenSees and the collapse capacity of these structures were determined by using incremental dynamic analyses under 67 far-field ground motion records. After calculating the collapse capacity values by using scalar IMs existing in the technical literature which are classified into structure and non-structure specific IMs, the performance of IMs including efficiency and sufficiency with respect to magnitude, source-to-site distance, and average shear-wave velocity at the upper 30 m was compared.