Numerical Study on Energy Dissipation of Steel Moment Resisting Frames under Effect of Earthquake Vibrations

In the regions near to active faults, if the fault rupture propagation is towards the site and the shear wave propagation velocity is near the velocity of fault rupture propagation, the forward directivity effect causes pulse-like long-period large-amplitude vibrations perpendicular to the fault plane which causes a large amount of energy to be imposed to structures in a short time. According to previous investigations, the amounts of input and dissipated energies in the structure represent the general performance of the structure and show the level of damage and flexibility of the structure against earthquake. Therefore, in this study, the distribution of damage in the structure height and its amount at the height of steel moment frames under the pulse-like vibrations in the near fault region has been investigated. The results of this study show that the increase rate of earthquake input energy with respect to increase in the number of stories of the structure in the near field of fault is triple that in the far field of fault which then leads to a 2–2.5 times increase in the earthquake input energy in the high rise moment frames in the near field of fault with respect to that in the far field of fault.