Formulation of elastic earthquake input energy spectra

The object of this paper is to introduce a procedure for the determination of elastic design earthquake input energy spectra taking into account the influence of magnitude, soil type and distance from the surface projection of the fault. Firstly, an accurate selection of a large set of representative records has been realized. Secondly, the construction of the design input energy spectra has required determining the spectral shapes and a normalization factor which measures seismic hazard in terms of energy. This factor, denoted as the seismic hazard energy factor, has been defined as the area under the earthquake input energy spectrum in the period interval between 0·05 and 4·0 s. Finally, due to the importance of the source-to-site distance in the evaluation of the input energy, an investigation into the attenuation of the seismic hazard energy factor has been carried out. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.