Simulating and analyzing artificial nonstationary earthquake ground motions

Abstract This paper describes models used to simulate earthquake accelerograms and analyses of these artificial accelerogram records for use in structural response studies. The artificial accelerogram records are generated by a class of linear linear difference equations which have been previously identified as suitable for describing ground motions. The major contributions of the paper are the use of Kalman filters for estimating time-varying model parameters, and the development of an effective nonparametric method for estimating the variance envelopes of the accelerogram records.