With increasing magnitude of design earthquake ground motions, it is necessary to develop methods of evaluating the seismic safety margin that are more exact than the current methods. However, a standard nonlinear analysis method requires step by step calculations of the numerical time integration scheme to obtain the seismic response. The authors present a new simplified analysis method of elasto-plastic seismic response. The proposed method is formulated by the energy balance between the input energy and the dissipated energy of an equivalent single degree of freedom model for actual equipment. Assuming the harmonic resonance of the single degree of freedom model, the maximum displacement response can be estimated conservatively. To verify the proposed method, static tests and vibration tests with cantilever-type specimens were performed. The vibration tests were conducted with sine, sweep down sine and random waves to verify the conservativeness of the proposed method. Comparisons of the maximum displacement between the tests and the proposed method show the conservative estimation of the displacement by the proposed method.
Non-linear Analysis Method of Ground Using Equivalent Single-degree-of-freedom Model