Intensity measures for the seismic response prediction of base-isolated buildings

Base isolation has become a widely applied technique for protecting buildings located in highly seismic areas. Due to the strongly non-linear constitutive behaviour typical of many isolation devices, the seismic response of base-isolated buildings is usually evaluated through non-linear dynamic analysis. In this type of analysis a suitable set of ground motions is needed for representing the earthquake loads and for exciting the structural model. Many methods can be found in the literature for defining the ground motions. When natural accelerograms are used, the methods mainly differ from each other based on the intensity measures used for scaling the records to the defined earthquake intensity level. Investigations have been carried out for evaluating the predictive capability of the intensity measures used in these methods: while many studies focused on ordinary buildings, only a few focused on base-isolated ones. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the most commonly used intensity measures, which are currently available in the literature, with respect to their capability to predict the seismic response of base-isolated buildings. Selected for the investigation are two frame structures characterized by a different number of storeys and base-isolated with systems having different properties. Two sets of accelerograms, consisting of ordinary and pulse-like near-fault records, are used in the analyses and in the evaluation of the intensity measures. Modified versions of existing intensity measures are also proposed, with the intent of improving the correlations between the considered intensity measures and response quantities.