Selection and scaling of real earthquake accelerograms to fit the Turkish design spectra

Due to rapid developments in structural analysis and computational facilities, nonlinear time-history analysis is becoming more common in seismic analysis and design of structures. One of the crucial issues of such analysis is the selection of acceleration time histories to satisfy design code requirements and soil type at a specific site. In literature, there are three sources of acceleration time histories: artificial records compatible with design response spectrum, synthetic records obtained from seismological models and accelerograms recorded during real earthquakes. Due to the increase of available strong ground motion database, using and scaling real recorded accelerograms is becoming one of the latest contemporary research issues in this field. In this study, basic methodologies and criteria for selecting strong ground motion time histories are discussed and summarized. The time domain scaling procedure is utilized to scale the available real records to match the proposed elastic design spectrum given in the Turkish Seismic Code (DBYBHY, 2007) for different seismic regions and local site classes. The best fitted ground motion time histories are selected and classified taken into account the earthquake magnitude, focal mechanism and site conditions.