Comparison of Seismic Input Energy Based on the Characteristics of Structural Hysteretic Behavior

The variation of earthquake input energy with characteristics of various structural systems, particularly in hysteretic states, has not been studied to such extent that creates enough con-fidence for proposing energy-based design criteria. In this paper, at first, based on a somehow new insight into the concept of earthquake input energy, two concepts of ‘Received Energy’ (ERec) and ‘Returned Energy’ (ERet) have been discussed. Then, by using various hysteretic mod-els for expressing the behavior of structures, including elasto-plastic, bilinear, Wen, Clough, and Takeda models, and two strength levels for the structure, variations of the ‘Total Input Energy’ (ETot) and also ERec and ERet with respect to the structural specifications have been investigated, by a series of Non-Linear Time History Analyses (NLTHA). Several earthquake accelerograms with various frequency contents from low to high, and peak ground acceleration values have been used for NLTHA. Results show that in some cases the amount of seismic input energy varies remarkably with the hysteretic specifications of the structure, particularly its strength. On this basis, it can be claimed that the hysteretic specifications can be used as measures for limiting the amount of earthquake input energy, and accordingly the level of overall damage to the structure.