Collapse assessment of steel moment frames using endurance time method

In endurance time (ET) method structures are subjected to a set of predesigned intensifying excitations. These excitations are produced in a way that their response spectrum, while complying with a specified spectrum, intensifies with time so they can be used approximately to simulate the average effects of several ground motions scaled to different intensities. In this paper applicability of the ET method for evaluating collapse potential of buildings is investigated. A set of four steel moment frames is used for collapse assessment. The process of using ET method in collapse evaluation is explained and the results are compared with incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) results. It is shown that although the computational effort using the ET method is much less than the IDA analysis, the results of both methods are consistent. Finally collapse fragility curves using ET and IDA methods are produced and it is shown that the probabilities of collapse in different hazard levels are also consistent.