Ground motion record selection based on broadband spectral compatibility

The increasing interest towards perfor mance-based earthquake engineering has promoted research on the improvement of hazard-consistent seismic input definition, and on advanced criteria for st rong motion record se lection to perform non-linear time history analyses. Within the ongoing research activities to advance the representation of seismic actions and to develop tools as a support for engineering practice, this study addresse s the selection of displacement-spectrum- compatible real ground motions, with special reference to Italy. This involved the definition of specific target displacement spectra for Italian sites, constrained - both at long and short periods - by results of probabilis tic seismic hazard analysis, the compilation of a high-quality strong ground motion database, and the development of a software tool for computer-aided displacement-based record selection. Application examples show th at sets of unscaled, or lightly-scaled, accelerograms with limited record-to-reco rd spectral variability can easily be obtained also when a broadband spectr al compatibility is required.