Novel Hilbert spectrum-based seismic intensity parameters interrelated with structural damage

The objective of this study is to propose new seismic intensity parameters based on the Hilbert spectrum and to associate them with the seismic damage potential. In recent years the assessment of even more seismic features derived from the seismic acceleration time-histories was associated with the structural damage. For a better insight into the complex seismic acceleration time-history, Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) analysis is utilized for its processing, and the Hilbert spectrum is obtained. New proposed seismic intensity parameters based on the Hilbert spectrum are derived. The aim is to achieve a significant estimation of the seismic damage potential on structures from the proposed new intensity parameters confirmed by statistical methods. Park-Ang overall structural damage index is used to describe the postseismic damage status of structures. Thus, a set of recorded seismic accelerograms from all over the word is applied on a reinforced concrete frame structure, and the Park-Ang indices through nonlinear dynamic analysis are provided and considered subsequently as reference numerical values. Conventional seismic parameters, with well-known seismic structural damage interrelation, are evaluated for the same set of excitations. Statistical procedures, namely correlation study and multilinear regression analysis, are applied on the set of the conventional parameters and the set of proposed new parameters separately, to confirm their interrelation with the seismic structural damage. The regression models are used for the evaluation of the structural damage indices for every set of parameters, respectively. The predicted numerical values of the structural damage indices evaluated from the two sets of seismic intensity parameters are inter-compared with the reference values. The numerical results confirm the ability of the proposed Hilbert spectrum based new seismic intensity parameters to approximate the postseismic structural damage with a smaller Standard Error of Estimation than this accomplished of the conventional ones.