From Modeling to Post-Processing: A Framework for Efficient NLRHA (original) (raw)

Nonlinear response history analysis (NLRHA) is being increasingly used in the process of designing new buildings or existing building retrofits. The advantage of NLRHA is that it provides detailed and realistic information about the nonlinear behavior of a structure under realistic ground motion earthquake loading. However, the processing of setting up a nonlinear model, selecting ground motion records, performing the analysis under different ground motions, boundary conditions, material and soil properties (often including upper and lower bound analyses), and the consideration of multiple eccentricity cases, often results in a large and almost unmanageable task. Modern analysis software is capable of generating detailed output information describing the response of each element and component over the duration of the excitation. The analyst/designer is then faced with the overwhelming task of exporting, processing, and analyzing a very large amount of data, and performing the approp...