SIMULATION OF EARTHQUAKE RECORDS BY MEANS OF EMPIRICAL MODE DECOMPOSITION AND HILBERT SPECTRAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

One of the most important problems in the design of earthquake resistance structures at sites with no strong ground motion data is the generation and simulation of earthquake records. In this paper, an effective method based on Hilbert–Huang transform for the simulation of earthquake time histories is presented. The Hilbert–Huang transform consists of the empirical mode decomposition and Hilbert spectral analysis. Earthquake time histories decompose via empirical mode decomposition to obtain the intrinsic mode functions of earthquake time history. Any of intrinsic mode functions is simulated based on the proposed method for simulation. The ground frequency function of the presented model is estimated using Hilbert spectral analysis for the simulation of earthquake accelerograms. The proposed method has been applied to three earthquake records to demonstrate the efficiency and reliability of the approach. The obtained results of simulating method by comparison between pseudo-acceleration and pseudo-velocity response spectra of actual and the average of simulated time histories for these three earthquakes reveal that the simulated earthquake time histories well preserve the significant properties and the nonstationary characteristics of the actual earthquake records. The results indicated that there is a good accord between the response spectra of simulated and genuine time histories.