Correlation between earthquake intensity parameters and damage indices of high-rise RC chimneys

This present paper proposes a spectral-acceleration-based earthquake intensity measure, which considers the higher modes effect and period elongation effect. A comprehensive study has been carried out to investigate the correlation between structural damages of high-rise chimneys and the proposed intensity measure as well as a number of widely used ground motion parameters under far-field ground motion records. Three RC high-rise chimneys, i.e., a 240 m-high chimney, a 180 m-high chimney, a 120 m-high chimney, are established and analyzed in OpenSees. The structural performance is expressed in terms of Park-Ang damage index, maximum inter-story drift ratio, maximum roof displacement, and maximum floor acceleration. The results indicate that the majority of displacement-related ground motion parameters behave too poor to yield a good correlation with the structural damage index of high-rise chimneys. Moreover, the proposed intensity measure has a high correlation with the structural damage indices, especially with maximum inter-story drift ratio and maximum roof displacement. As a result, the proposed earthquake IM is a promising parameter to predict the structural damage of high-rise chimneys.