Plastic energy dissipated during an earthquake as a function of structural properties and ground motion characteristics

During earthquakes input energy flows from the ground to structures and should be dissipated by damping mechanisms and by plastic deformation which is responsible in part for structural damage. This work relates the dissipated plastic energy to the ground motion characteristics and to the structural parameters. Five single-degree of freedom structures and two multi-degree of freedom structures with different strengths are used. Simple expressions are found to calculate the amount of input energy that is transformed into plastic energy as a function of the earthquake duration, strength, damping ratio and oscillation period of the system.