Defining an acceleration time-history

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Defining an acceleration time-history

When ran, SeismoSignal opens its main Time Series module, where a given accelerogram can be defined and displayed, preferably by reading it from a text file. The program can read accelerograms saved in any of the two most popular text file formats used by strong-motion databases; single- and multiple-values per line. In order to open the accelerogram, users should select the File>Open menu command and then define the respective input file parameters; first line and last line to be read, the time-step of the time-history and the scaling factor (if users wish to scale up or down the accelerogram being read). The first line value essentially specifies the number of lines to be neglected from the beginning of the file. Commonly, accelerogram text files contain introductory header lines, describing their source, characteristics, etc. Evidently, these lines are not to be read by the program. As an example, consider the corrected accelerogram files obtained from the European Strong Motion Database, where a 31 lines header is usually found. For these cases, the first line to be read becomes evidently equal to 32. The last line parameter is also needed for those particular cases where the text file contains additional information after the acceleration values. This is a typical behaviour for files coming from a number of strong motion databases whereby velocity and/or displacement time-histories follow their acceleration counterparts. In such cases, it is evidently needed for the last line value to point to the last line of acceleration values. Further, depending on the type of text file format being, other input file parameters must be defined, as described below: Single-value per line input text files

To open accelerograms saved in this single-value per line type of format, users must specify one additional input file parameter; the column in which the acceleration values are to be found. In the case of example of 1 above, the acceleration column would have the value 2 (values in all other columns are ignored by the program), whilst in the case of example 2, the acceleration column should be defined as 1.

Multiple-value per line input text files

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Defining an acceleration time-history

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To open accelerograms saved in this multiple-value per line type of format, users must specify also two additional input file parameters; the frequency of reading and the initial values skipped. A frequency value of 1 means that all values are read, frequency 2 means that every other value is read, frequency 3 means that one in three values is read (typically used in case of files where values of acceleration, velocity and displacement are given in sequence). In the case of example 3 defined above, the frequency to be defined would be 1 (and the initial values skipped should be 0), whilst in the case of example 4, the frequency value should be 2 (and the initial values skipped should be 1). As an alternative to the procedure defined above, acceleration time-history values, arranged in a single column, can be copied from a spreadsheet application (e.g. Microsoft Excel) to define an accelerogram upon opening of SeismoSignal. When the values are pasted in an empty project (through the Paste command available from the Edit main menu or from the table popup menu), the user is asked to define a scaling factor and the time-step to be considered, after which the accelerogram is displayed in the respective plotting window. Users can also take advantage of the 'Change Units' facility to set the units used by the program as equal to those of the input file. Once an accelerogram has been defined, the corresponding velocity and displacement time-histories, as obtained through single and double time-integration, respectively, are automatically computed and plotted in the Time Series program window. By default, baseline correction and filtering of the time-histories is not carried out before integration. Users who so wish, however, can enable or modify these pre-integration signal processing operations in the Baseline Correction and Filtering module. Note : On occasions, text files coming from a Unix environment (common in many databases) are not properly read by SeismoSignal. In such cases, users are advised to open the file with a text editor and save it in ANSI/DOS format. This should solve any eventual difficulties.

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