The selection of appropriate ground motions and reasonable modification are becoming increasingly critical in reliable prediction on seismic performance of structures. A widely used amplitude scaling approach is not sufficient for robust structural evaluation considering a site specific seismic hazard because only one spectral value is matched to the design spectrum typically at the structural fundamental period. Hence alternative approaches for ground motion selection and modifications have been suggested. However, there is no means to evaluate such methodologies yet. In this study, it is focused to describe the main questions resided in the amplitude scaling approach and to propose a regression model for structural damage as point of comparison. Spectrum compatible approach whose resulting spectrum matches the design spectrum at the entire range of the structural period is considered as alternative to be compared to the amplitude scaling approach. The design spectrum is generated according to ASCE7-05.

Constitutive modeling of constituent materials is very important for reinforced concrete (RC) frames. Cyclic constitutive behavior of unconfined concrete, confined concrete and reinforcing steel should be well defined in fiber-based discretization of RC sections. This study performs nonlinear dynamic analyses of RC frame structures to investigate the sensitivity of seismic behavior of such frames to different constitutive models of constituent materials. The study specifically attempts to examine confinement effects in concrete modeling and degrading effects in steel modeling, which substantially affects the monotonic, cyclic and seismic responses of RC members and frames. Based on the system level analysis, it is shown that the response of non-ductile frames is less sensitive to confined concrete models while the modeling of reinforcing steel is quite influential to the inelastic response of both non-ductile and ductile frames.