A new measure of earthquake demand, the drift spectrum has been developed as an adjunct to the response spectrum, a central concept in earthquake engineering, in calculating the internal deformations of a structure due to near-fault ground motions with pronounced coherent pulses in the velocity and displacement histories. Compared in this paper are certain aspects of the elastic structural response to near-fault and far-fault ground motions. It is demonstrated that (1) the difference between drift and response spectra are not unique to near-fault ground motions; these differences simply reflect higher-mode response, which is larger due to near-fault ground motions; (2) response spectrum analysis (RSA) using existing modal combination rules can provide an estimate of structural response that is accurate to a useful degree; (3) these modal combination rules are similarly accurate for near-fault and far-fault ground motions although the underlying assumptions are not satisfied by near-fault excitations; and (4) RSA is preferable over the drift spectrum in computing structural response because it represents standard engineering practice and is applicable to a wide variety of structures.
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