Raised drift demands for framed buildings during near-field earthquakes

The improvement of understanding structural capacity against large displacement demand of near-fault conditions has become a subject of research interest for the last decade. Parallel to the developments in performance-based seismic design (PBSD) this issue has attracted researcher interest further, as assessment of structural displacement capacity has become one of the main issues for the procedures employed in this new concept. This study focuses on the near-fault ground motion demand on framed structures. We have used soil site, near-field records from various M > 6.5 events including the 1999 Turkey and Taiwan earthquakes. The spectral quantities were computed using a ground motion prediction relationship that is based partly on these near-fault ground motion records. The spectral quantities were evaluated for the global displacement demand definition of such ground motions. We employ this global demand definition to calculate the distance and magnitude dependent inter-story drift demand limits for frame-type structures. Comparison of these preliminary findings with code provisions is encouraging.