Structural Madness

In our previous blogs we discussed about  Response Spectrum Analysis ,  Earthquake and Energy Dissipation  as well as  Ductility demand in structures during seismic loading . In response spectrum analysis topics like mode shapes, modal mass participation factors, derivation of response spectrum we discussed. In earthquake vs energy dissipation blog, we talked about energy dissipated from buildings through strain energy, inelastic energy, hysteresis, damping and ductility. In ductility demand we discussed about importance of ductile detailing and how it helps a building to work during earthquakes just like a marathon runner during long runs.  Generally inelastic energy dissipation, damping energy, ductility demand and ductility capacity, hysteresis loops are all captured when a nonlinear model is built, and time history analysis is performed for the structure. But to do nonlinear time history analysis, it takes a long time to build a model. The performance evaluation and result ve

In the blog post about Response Spectrum Analysis I , I tried to describe response of the system, but one comment on the post rightly pointed out as the concept of spectrum was not described clearly, so in this post we will be talking about the concept spectrum and how it is generated, what it signifies and how is it helpful for engineers to understand the dynamic forces acting on the building. Now, if you have not read the previous part of response spectrum analysis, I would strongly recommend you to read it. In that part we discussed about what is response of a system under free vibrations and forced vibrations. In this post, I will be talking about spectrum and what to do with this spectrum. Now what actually is a spectrum? Let us go back to 6th or 7th grade when we were studying about rainbows and prim, how light is made of different colors. That band of color is known as spectrum if you recall. Spectrum defines a broad variety. Similarly the word  Response Spectrum  defi