Floor Acceleration Research Articles

Effective range of base isolation design parameters to improve structural performance under far and near-fault earthquakes

Triple Friction Pendulum Isolators (TFPIs) have been widely used to enhance the seismic capacity of structures in the recent decade. This study intends to measure the effect of different Ground Motion (GM) sets, including Far-Fault (FF) and Near-Fault (NF) records, on the seismic response of the Triple Friction Pendulum (TFP) isolated structures. For this aim, different Engineering Demand Parameters (EDP), including Inter-story Drift Ratio (IDR), absolute floor acceleration, base shear, residual displacement, and damage energy are measured using numerous Nonlinear Time History (NTH) analyses. A three-dimensional mid-rise special moment resisting frames (SMFs) steel building isolated with TFPIs has been designed as per ASCE 7-16. In addition, the separate and simultaneous effect of raising the damping ([Formula: see text]) and the period ([Formula: see text]) of the base isolation system on the seismic responses of the superstructure are measured to assess the structural performance and estimate the damage energy. The [Formula: see text] and the [Formula: see text] are amplified up to 30% and 4.5 times of the superstructure period in incremental steps, respectively. The results show that the damage energy of the superstructure in the Initial Design Parameters' Values (IDPVs) of the isolator under NF records with Forward-Directivity pulses (NF-FD-GMs) is more significant than damping energy, while an inverse trend has occurred for other GM sets. Increasing the IDPVs up to a certain level reduces most EDPs and consequently causes an improvement in the seismic performance of the superstructure. The novel developed empirical relationships can be utilized as useful tools to predict IDRs and the damage states of the superstructure. The variations of the EDPs with respect to simultaneous or separate increasing the IDPVs are also reported for different GM sets.

Numerical simulation of seismic response of Slope–Foundation–Structure interaction for mid–rise RC buildings at various locations

This study is intended to evaluate the seismic response of the Slope–Foundation–Structure interaction of the mid–rise building at various locations with varying slope angles for linear and nonlinear homogenous soil strata using finite element modelling. The dynamic implicit method is used for the time domain analysis, and the Kelvin element boundary is applied at the truncated soil domain to absorb the reflecting waves. The nonlinearity of soil is incorporated using the hyperbolic stress-strain model by developing the user-defined material (UMAT). The model is validated with published literature, and found the result in good agreement. Further, slope stability is evaluated using FLAC3D and found the factor of safety >1. The results are shown in terms of vertical displacement, horizontal displacement, drift ratio, peak horizontal floor acceleration (PHFA), the rocking of the foundation and base shear. The effects are calculated for the different locations of the building, nonlinearity and slope angle. Nonlinear soil behaviour shows the permanent vertical deformation of the foundation. The lateral displacement of the buildings constructed at the top of the slope and the bottom of the slope are more affected compared to the building constructed on the slope for all slope angles. The nonlinearity of soil is more likely to affect the lateral seismic response of the buildings located at the top and on the slope as compared to the building located at the bottom of the slope. The PHFA is reduced by incorporating the nonlinearity of soil for all slope angles. All buildings are experiencing a high interstorey drift ratio for slope angle 20. The base shear seems to increase with the decrease in slope angle for all buildings in case of linear and nonlinear soil behaviour. The building located on the slope is more vulnerable to rocking failure compared to buildings located at the top and bottom of the slope. With the increase in slope angle, the rocking of the foundation is also increasing.

Propuesta para obtener las máximas aceleraciones de piso usando la norma sísmica peruana e.030

The collapse of some floor diaphragms during earthquakes was due to failures in connection with vertical elements or because those were not designed for seismic forces in its plane. This has made that the design of diaphragms is an issue that has been incorporated in many seismic codes. For its design, it is necessary the maximum acceleration on each floor during a strong seismic event. The seismic Peruvian code E.030 does not include any methodology about how to calculate those accelerations floor, it only refers to acceleration on floors but due to maximum base shear which does not correspond to maximum acceleration in each level.
 In this paper, a simplified procedure for obtaining maximum floor accelerations is shown. This procedure is based on First Mode Reduced method [1] to which a factor rW was included to consider higher modes participation in dual systems (frames / walls). The rW factor corresponds to the ratio of base moment in walls and base moment in the building. In the validation of the procedure, it was observed that the proposed procedure agrees with the results of experimental and analytical models.

Resonance measurement and vibration reduction analysis of an office building induced by nearby crane workshop vibration

Tests were conducted on a 6-storey office building and factory building near where abnormal horizontal vibrations often occurred. The floor acceleration responses of the building were measured under the condition of crane operation, which was believed to be one of the sources of the vibration. A one-third octave spectrum and weighted acceleration levels were calculated from the measured floor acceleration time histories to assess human comfort levels. The modal parameters of the building were identified using the frequency domain decomposition method. The field test results indicated that the small crane's excitation frequency during the start and stop operations in the nearby factory was 3.6 Hz, which was the same as the fundamental natural frequency of the building. The resonance phenomenon between the building structure and the crane excitation caused the abnormal horizontal vibration. Finally, the influence of adjusting the excitation frequency, the excitation intensity, and the connection form of the foundation slab on the vibration responses was analyzed. Results showed that when the excitation frequency was adjusted to stagger the natural frequency of the structure by 20%, the acceleration level resulting from the same excitation could be reduced by half. The excitation intensity, the difference between the frequencies of excitation and structure was found to be the key factor influencing the structural resonance response.

Effectiveness of Different Base Isolation on Stepped Buildings

Abstract: Seismic isolation devices are commonly employed to protect structures from the impacts of severe ground motions. ETABS2016, a modelling and analysis programme, was used in this work to model and analyse the isolated stepped building. Rubber isolator link components were used as a single joint element to represent the rubber isolators between the ground and the superstructure. El-Centro seismic records were used to analyse the isolated building. The lateral inter-storey drifts, story displacement and peak absolute floor accelerations, of the isolated building were compared to those of the fixed-base structure. The current study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of several types of base isolation systems for seismic protection of 6-story stepped structures using Time history analysis. The isolation systems considered include, i) rubber isolators, ii) rubber isolators with energy dissipation systems, and iii) friction pendulum isolators.

Performance of clutched inerter damper for base-isolated structures under near-fault motions

The performance of the supplemental clutched inerter damper (CID) for the base-isolated multi-story structures subjected to near-fault earthquakes is investigated. The isolation system is considered as lead-rubber bearings with bi-linear characteristics and viscous damping. The resisting force of the CID is proportional to the relative acceleration between two terminals under the attached condition and zero when detached. The governing equations of motion of base-isolated structure and the CID are derived and solved using numerical techniques under seven near-fault ground motions data. The variation of peak bearing displacement, top floor absolute acceleration, total base shear, and the CID force is plotted against the inertance mass ratio of the CID. The above peak responses were also analyzed for different values of damping, period of isolation, yield strength of LRB, and superstructure stories. Application of the CID is observed to effectively facilitate the reduction in bearing displacement while the combined effect of isolation and the CID prevents the top floor acceleration to shoot up. The optimum value of inertance mass ratio is also determined by minimizing the total base shear which is the measure of equivalent lateral force on the structure. The optimum inertance lies in the range of 35%–45% of the total mass of the isolated building under near-fault motions. In addition, the performance of the CID base-isolated structure subjected to cycloidal pulses is also investigated. It is observed that the CID is quite effective in controlling the displacement of the isolation system under cycloidal pulses.

Determination of Earthquake Behaviors of a Reinforced Concrete Building with and without Earthquake Base Isolation

There are many fault lines within the borders of our country, especially the North Anatolian Fault line. For this reason, earthquake resistant structural design is a very important issue in order to prevent possible economic losses after earthquakes, especially the life safety of people living in our country. The main goal in earthquake insulation, which is a new approach in earthquake design of buildings, is to reduce the possible effects on the structure by placing flexible elements in the horizontal direction and rigid in the vertical direction, by greatly reducing the earthquake loads and accelerations acting on the superstructure. In this study, the earthquake behavior of the buildings, which were designed by the Housing Development Administration of the Republic of Turkey and designed as a base isolation support, and the structures designed according to the principles determined in the Turkey Building Earthquake Code 2018 by using base isolation, were determined according to the non-linear time history analysis method. The behavior changes of the structure designed using earthquake base isolation compared to the conventional structure were examined, and the period values, floor accelerations and base shear forces of the two structures were compared. As a result of the results obtained, the positive effects of the period increase and the decrease in floor accelerations in the earthquake insulated structure were revealed.

Rapid seismic response prediction of RC frames based on deep learning and limited building information

Building portfolio is the important urban engineering system, and the seismic resilience assessment of a city needs the quick and accurate prediction of the seismic responses of existed buildings. However, many existed buildings generally possess the problem that the design information materials are incomplete or completely lost. The major challenge in the seismic resilience assessment of building portfolio is how to predict the seismic responses of buildings quickly and accurately just using limited building information. This manuscript aims to develop a method for the seismic response prediction of the existed reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings just using limited building information. A total of 162 typical RC frame buildings of low to medium rise are designed, and the inter-story drift (IDR) as well as peak floor acceleration (PFA) of each floor in each building are computed for 200 ground motions with nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA) method. A convolutional neural network (CNN) is developed with ground motion records and five easy-getting building parameters as inputs. The outputs are IDR and PFA of each floor for the given building. Considering the physical means of an input parameter—number of stories, the modified loss function and modified evaluation function are proposed. The developed network is trained with the computed dataset and the modified loss function, and the trained model (referred to StruNet) can take the characteristics of ground motions and structures into consideration together comparing to previous studies. The proposed model is verified through four cases (i.e., 4 actual buildings with different construction time, occupancy types, and plane layouts), which are independent of the deep learning dataset. The results confirm that the proposed method offers prediction results with sufficient accuracy and shows high computational efficiency.

Probability seismic demand and fragility analyses of novel SMA-based self-centring eccentrically braced frames

This paper performs the seismic assessment of novel shape memory alloy (SMA)-based self-centring (SC) eccentrically braced frames (EBFs) by using probabilistic seismic demand analysis (PSDA) and probabilistic seismic fragility analysis (PSFA). The structural finite element models are established based on a previous prototype building and verified through test results. The PSDA is based on a set of 176 seismic records, and Sa avg is chosen as the proper intensity measure for max inter-storey drift ratio (MIDR) and max inter-storey residual drift ratio (MIRR); whereas peak ground acceleration is more suitable for peak floor acceleration (PFA). After the PSDA results are obtained, time-history analyses and PSFA are conducted. Compared with traditional steel EBFs, the SMA-based SC-EBF shows a slight weakness in MIDR due to the comparatively small energy dissipation capacity but has an apparent advantage in controlling MIRR due to a good SC capacity provided by SMA angles. Furthermore, although the steel EBF with fixed column bases has the smallest MIDR, the fixed bases cause extra damage in column bases, which will bring other problems in post-earthquake rebuild and deviate from the design target of concentrating damage in link beams. The variability of the PFA is small, showing that the influence of structural forms on PFA is not apparent. Considering the overall structural seismic performances in terms of MIDR, MIRR and PFA, SMA-based SC-EBF can be a promising alternative in future seismic-resistant designs.

Seismic overturning fragility analysis for freestanding building contents subjected to horizontal bidirectional floor motions

The rocking response of freestanding building contents simplified as rigid bodies was usually investigated in two dimensions with ground motions as the input, while their three-dimensional (3-D) rocking response subjected to horizontal bidirectional floor motions needs further investigation in both deterministic and probabilistic views. In this paper, the rocking response of freestanding 3-D rectangular blocks subjected to seismic excitations with two horizontal components are first investigated by shake table tests and finite element (FE) numerical simulation. An incremental dynamic analysis-based overturning fragility assessment method for the blocks within a building subjected to bidirectional ground motions is then proposed, using uncoupled nonlinear FE models of the block-building systems. The overturning fragility of six blocks within a four-story reinforced concrete frame structure is assessed. The influence of excitation directions, floor levels, block slenderness ratios (2.5, 3, 3.5 and 4), block sizes (size parameters of 91 mm, 182 mm and 364 mm) and intensity measurements (IMs) on the overturning fragility of the block is characterized. The experimental overturning fragility curves of three blocks in real conditions under bidirectional seismic excitations are finally obtained from the shake table tests. Rocking-torsional rotations are observed for the block with sliding not allowed. The block rocks around a side or a vertex while overturns around a side. Except the largest block, the block under bidirectional excitations is usually more and sometimes equally vulnerable to overturn in comparison to that under unidirectional excitations. The block on a higher floor is found to be more vulnerable to overturn than that on a lower floor considering the peak ground acceleration-based IM. These observations highlight on the significance of 3-D analysis for the rocking blocks considering floor acceleration amplification. This paper also enlarges the experimental database of seismic rocking response of rectangular blocks under bidirectional horizontal motions.

Seismic performance of RC-ECC composite frame by eliminating shear reinforcement in beam-column joint: Shake table tests

The inherent vulnerability of beam-column joints to seismic loading and steel congestion are two major research problems connected with beam-column joints of moment-resisting frames. The experimental study presented herein addresses these research questions and seeks to solve them by using Polyvinyl Alcohol based Engineered Cementitious Composite (PVA-ECC) in beam-column joints without transverse shear reinforcement. The study included the manufacture and shake table testing of two 1:3 reduced scale one bay two-story moment-resisting frame models using simulated earthquake motions. To evaluate the performance of ECC beam-column joints without shear reinforcement, two frame models, one with and the other without shear reinforcement in the beam-column joints, were prepared and tested. The acceleration time history record of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake USA was used for the excitation of specimens at different levels to produce progressive damage up to the near collapse state. The observed damage mechanism of tested models was recorded, and the response parameters, including floor displacement and acceleration, were measured. The measured data was processed to develop a lateral force-displacement envelope curve for the supposed prototype frames and calculate their seismic design factors (ductility, overstrength, and response modification). Comparison of the seismic performance parameters of the two prototype frames reveal that the ECC beam/column joint without shear ties performed marginally inferior to the ECC beam-column joints having shear ties but it still achieved a 75% larger R-factor compared with the code specified value.

Hybrid self-centering companion spines for structural and nonstructural damage control

This paper intends to develop a new lateral force-resisting system – the hybrid self-centering companion spines system (denoted as the HSCS system) – for obtaining better seismic resilience by controlling both structural and nonstructural damage. The HSCS system consists of two rigid spines pinned to the ground and several hybrid dampers. The two rigid spines can facilitate the structure to avoid soft-story mechanisms and control higher mode responses by promoting uniform inter-story drift distribution under strong earthquakes. The hybrid damper is made of a friction spring damper and a viscous damper in parallel and provides the self-centering feature, energy-absorbing capacity, and acceleration- and velocity-control capacity for reducing structural and nonstructural damage. A performance-based design (PBD) procedure was developed for the HSCS system based on the concept of the direct displacement-based design method. The three-story and six-story demonstration buildings were considered in this study to investigate the seismic performance of steel buildings equipped with the proposed HSCS systems. Four designs with different design parameters were performed for the demonstration buildings based on the proposed PBD procedure. The three- and six-story self-centering companion spines systems (denoted as SCS systems) were considered for highlighting the benefits of adopting HSCS systems. Nonlinear dynamic analyses were conducted to evaluate the structural and nonstructural damage of the designed buildings under earthquakes. The analysis results indicate that the designed HSCS systems can achieve the desired performance objective and nonlinear behavior under dynamic excitations. The HSCS systems can show excellent structural damage control performance and post-earthquake recoverability by controlling the residual inter-story drift much smaller than 0.2% even under MCE excitations. The excellent nonstructural damage control capacity can be also observed in the designed HSCS systems, while most of the nonstructural components are only slightly damaged even under MCE excitations. Moreover, the HSCS systems can achieve smaller absolute floor acceleration and floor velocity responses than SCS systems under both DBE and MCE although they are designed to achieve similar maximum inter-story drift responses under DBE.

Seismic response distribution expressions for rocking building contents under ordinary ground motions

Analytical expressions are proposed for predicting the rocking response of rigid free-standing building contents subjected to seismic-induced floor excitations. The study considers a wide range of rigid block geometries and seismic floor acceleration histories that were recorded during actual earthquakes in instrumented Californian buildings, so as to cover, in a fully probabilistic manner, the entire spectrum of potential pure rocking responses, i.e. from the initiation of rocking up to the block overturning. Contrary to past observations on anchored building contents (prior to any failure in their anchorage system that could alter their response and mode of failure), it is shown that the response of free-standing blocks is not influenced by the predominant period of the supporting structure. The proposed set of equations can be utilised for estimating the response statistics and consequently for undertaking an analytical seismic fragility assessment on rocking building contents.

Seismic performance analysis of multi-story steel frames equipped with FeSMA BRBs

Buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) have been widely used in seismic prone areas around the world. However, one major problem associated with the steel BRB frames is the excessive residual deformation under strong earthquakes, mainly due to the low post-yield stiffness ratio of the steel BRBs. Recently, the community has fabricated the iron-based shape memory alloy (FeSMA) BRBs, which exhibited full hysteresis with high post-yield stiffness ratios, but the seismic behavior of the FeSMA BRB frames still remains unknown. As such, this paper conducts seismic performance analysis of multi-story steel frames equipped with the FeSMA BRBs, through a comparison with those equipped with conventional steel BRBs. Incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) is further conducted to establish the probability seismic demand models. Based on the IDA data, bivariate fragility analysis is conducted to quantify the probability of exceedance, conditioned on various limitations of the maximum and residual interstory drift ratios. According to current analysis, it indicates that both the maximum interstory drift ratios and the maximum floor accelerations are comparable between these two types of BRB frames. The major advantage of the FeSMA BRBs over the steel BRBs is that the former can better control residual interstory drift ratios.

Importance Analysis of Structural Seismic Demand Based on Support Vector Machine

Seismic demand analysis of structures plays an important role in the structural seismic calculation; however, studies on the importance analysis of seismic demand are limited. A new method based on a support vector machine (SVM) is proposed to analyze the importance of structural seismic demand and study the influence of random variables on structural seismic demand in this study, where the linear kernel function, Gauss kernel function, and polynomial kernel function are used in SVM. The time history analysis of the steel-reinforced concrete (SRC) frame structures has been carried out by the finite element software OpenSees under the action of different seismic records. Four kinds of seismic demand of the SRC frame structure are analyzed in this study, which are top displacement, maximum floor acceleration, base shear, and maximum interstory drift angle, respectively. Importance indexes of the four kinds of structural seismic demand are in good agreement with those of the Monte Carlo (MC) numerical simulation method and Tornado graphic method, which verify the accuracy of the proposed method. Moreover, the sample size of the proposed method is greatly smaller than that of the MC method. Therefore, the computation efficiency has been improved significantly by the proposed method.

Large scale loss assessment using stick-it model: A comparison with actual cost data

The estimation of expected seismic losses at regional scale represents a critical issue for the assessment of the seismic risk and for the evaluation of the seismic resilience of large communities. In a performance-based approach, the assessment of economic losses requires the computation of the building performances in terms of engineering demand parameters such as interstory drift ratios and peak floor accelerations in order to assess the distribution and the extent of the damage experienced by various building components. The Stick-IT model (Stick for Infilled frames Typologies) was recently proposed to predict the response, in terms of engineering demand parameters, for infilled RC building typologies. The Stick-IT is a MDOF system consisting of a series of lumped masses connected by nonlinear shear link elements. The model parameters can be defined for building typologies starting from low-level information that can be easily retrieved at the large scale via image-based processing techniques integrated with information about typical construction features, such as in plan dimensions, the number of stories or the percentage of infills openings and considering the infills consistency.This paper adopts the Stick-IT model within a probabilistic framework to predict damage and expected losses for a set of residential buildings located in L'Aquila town that suffered damage during the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. By comparing the predicted losses with the actual repair costs, the application shows the advantages and the potentiality of the proposed model when adopted for large scale loss assessments.

Demountable shear wall with rocking boundary columns for precast concrete buildings in high seismic regions

In this paper, a Demountable shear Wall with Rocking Column (DWRC) system is proposed. The purpose of the DWRC system is to ensure that the demountable shear walls are damaged while the boundary columns remain resilient. To increase the system's energy dissipation capacity, a series of steel slit dampers are placed at the rocking column bases and vertical joints of the walls. Also, instead of a large wall, several smaller walls are used in each story. To evaluate the behavior of the DWRC system, 15 models of 3, 9 and 15-stories are studied. At each height level, four DWRC models, with various numbers of steel dampers per vertical joints of walls, are compared to a conventional shear wall model. After developing numerical models, nonlinear cyclic and time history analyzes are performed. The results reveal that with the introduction of rocking boundary columns, all plastic strains are concentrated in demountable walls and steel dampers, while the columns remain undamaged. Also, by using slender walls for the DWRC system, plastic strains are distributed with less intensity in walls of all stories. Due to these results, for DWRC models, maximum value of inter-story drift, floor acceleration and residual displacement are reduced by 14%, 24% and 27%, respectively, compared to the conventional shear wall model.

Investigation of the Effects of Superstructure Damping Ratio on Buildings with Lead Rubber Bearings under Earthquake Effect

Kurşun çekirdekli elastomer (KÇE) yalıtım birimleri yüksek enerji sönümleme kapasiteleri nedeniyle en çok kullanılan sismik yalıtım birimleri arasında yer almaktadır. Bununla birlikte, yapılan deneysel çalışmalar; kurşun çekirdekte tersinir yükler altında meydana gelen sıcaklık artışının, kurşunun akma dayanımını düşürerek karakteristik dayanımda azalmaya yol açtığını ve bu etkiyi dikkate almanın önemli olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Sismik yalıtımlı binalarda yalıtım sisteminin yanı sıra, üstyapı da kendi iç sönümü sayesinde bir dereceye kadar enerji sönümleme özelliğine sahiptir. Ancak, bu yapıların tasarımlarında ve bu tür yapıları ele alan araştırma çalışmalarında üstyapı için farklı sönüm oranlarının kullanıldığı görülmektedir. Bu çalışmada, üstyapı sönümünün, (i) taban ankastre betonarme binalara benzer şekilde % 5 alınması, (ii) % 2 gibi daha küçük bir değer alınması ya da (iii) tamamen ihmal edilmesi durumunda sismik yalıtımlı binaların kurşun çekirdek ısınmasına bağlı davranışlarının değişimi incelenmiştir. Sismik yalıtımlı betonarme bir bina, OpenSees programında, kurşun çekirdek ısınmasının dayanım üzerindeki etkisi göz önünde bulundurularak modellenmiş ve zaman tanım alanında yapılan doğrusal olmayan analizlerden elde edilen kat ivmeleri, kurşun çekirdekteki sıcaklık artışı, yalıtım birimi kesme kuvvetleri ve deplasmanları gibi tepkiler incelenmiştir. Sonuçlar, özellikle kat ivmelerinin önemli ölçüde değişebildiğini ve farklı üstyapı sönüm oranlarıyla elde edilen kat ivmelerinin farklı sınır aralıklarında olabileceğini ortaya koymuştur.

Seismic design of low-rise steel building frames with self-centering hybrid damping connections

This paper develops a practice-oriented seismic design procedure for an emerging lateral force resisting system. The system combines the favorable re-centering feature with the attractive hybrid damping capacity. The system overcomes the detrimental frame expansion effect that occurs in conventional self-centering building frames without the cost of building space. Following the proposed design procedure, multiple designs with different parameters to achieve performance objectives were performed for a representative three-story building in which the considered lateral force resisting system is used to resist the seismic forces. Nonlinear response history analyses were performed for the designs to evaluate the applicability and adequacy of the proposed design approach. Based on the analyses conducted in this research, it was found that the considered system designed using the proposed approach can meet both transient and residual inter-story drift requirements specified for the selected performance objectives. While an initial design per the proposed design approach may be inadequate, the re-design strategy recommended can help transform the design to an acceptable one after only one round of modification. Moreover, the composition of hybrid damping may affect the maximum floor acceleration responses. In this study, the maximum floor acceleration can be reduced 12.75% at most by replacing hysteretic damping with viscous damping. This should be included in design consideration in the proposed approach through adjusting the hybrid damping composition.

Self-centering hybrid moment braced frame: Stiffness control and the self-centering acceleration adverse effect

The self-centering brace (SCB) generally exhibits higher initial stiffness than the buckling-restrained brace (BRB), which has great effects on structural performance. In this work, a stiffness control SCB (S-SCB) is proposed to overcome the difficult adjustment of the initial stiffness of the existing SCB. Via the simulation of the S-SCB, it is found that a higher initial stiffness increases the energy dissipation capacity and has no influence on the residual deformation. Four 9-story S-SCB frames (S-SCBFs) with different stiffnesses are simulated, and the influences of the energy dissipation capacity and intensity on the structural response are also considered. It is found that the increase of the initial stiffness can reduce the displacement response, but the serious amplification of the peak absolute floor acceleration (PAA) appears on the middle or lower floors, namely the self-centering adverse effect (SAE). The SAE can be reduced by the lower initial stiffness, high activated stiffness, and greater energy dissipation capacity of the S-SCB. An assessment method including two indices is proposed to describe the degree of acceleration amplification and the floor distribution characteristics. The indices of the S-SCBF are found to exhibit significantly different characteristics from those of the BRB frame (BRBF) and the moment-resisting frame (MRF). The maximum PAA of the S-SCBF is found to be 1.5 times less than that of the BRBF with the same skeleton curve. The feasibility of the acceleration assessment method is verified by a set of frames with 4-, 8-, and 16-story.