Generation of Earthquake Ground Motions Preserving Non-Stationary Characteristics for Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

A new approach for generating a set of tri-directional earthquake time-histories compatible with the target seismic design spectra for nuclear energy facilities based on multiple sets of actual earthquake records is presented. The tri-directional spectrum-compatible earthquake time-histories are generated by using the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and solving optimization problems. The generation procedure can preserve the non-stationary characteristics of the seed actual earthquake records.