Dynamic Seismic Analysis book...suggestions

[AlienMonkey]

I'm looking for a relatively straight forward and easy to understand book related to dynamic seismic analysis. Something centered around modal response spectrum and time-history analyses.

Suggestions?

 

[Qshake]

There are two main books used by many SEs today:

Dynamics of Structure by Clough and Penzien

and

Dynamics of Structures: Theory and Applications to Earthquake Engineering by Chopra

There are many others:

Mario Paz,
Glenn Berg,
Gary Hart and Wong,
Roy Craig,

to name a few. You'll have to determine which is best for you. My first recommendation for you to review is the Chopra book, then Craig and followed by Paz.

Regards,
Qshake

Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

I've never been very impressed with the books on this subject. Most of them treat dynamics as a mathematical theory..... i.e. they are written by professors who teach structural engineering, not by structural engineers.

The difference is teaching theory versus teaching practical knowledge.

I've used Mario Paz's book and found it to be a bit more understandable than others.

For response spectra, the book by AK Gupta "Response Spectrum Method" is probably the most comprehensive one out there. But, it suffers from the same problem as most of these books..... It focuses so much on explaining the mathematical theories that it is not necessarily an easy read for a beginner.

 

[Qshake]

While I understand what you mean, I think it's hard to work in Structural Dynamics without sufficient knowledge of the math theory.

In it's raw form, Structural Dynamics is modeling physical behavior using differential equations followed by, for most cases, numerical solution.

A practical text would really only show, IMHO, pages after pages of problem modeling with solutions, sort of like a Roarks but for Dynamics.

There is also a Shock and Vibration Handbook but this is mainly geared toward Mechanical Engineering applications. It does treat RSA and THA.



Regards,
Qshake

Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

What I want to see is a text that goes over the basic dynamic theory, but doesn't get bogged down in the math too much. This really only needs to be 3 or 4 chapters. You don't have to devote the whole book to it.

Also, it doesn't have to be entirely matrix based. You can actually give some simplified hand calc methods for coming up with natural periods as well (Raleigh method?). Give the user simplified methods with which they can decifer the "black box" results that typically get spit out from a computer analysis program. These texts usually assume that you're writing your own program. But, rarely are you going to use these methods to write a new program. Instead, you're going to verify an existing program using some simplified methods.

Then define Response Spectra based on a SDOF system, show how that can be used to get the same results as a more complex time history analysis of any SDOF system subjected to the same ground motion. That wouldn't take more than a chapter. But, most texts do not take much effort to really describe how a spectra is put together from a given ground motion.

Spend another chapter or half chapter explaining how the concepts from our SDOF system can be extrapolated into an Response Spectra Analysis of a multi-degree of freedom system.

Spend some time describing the basis for the code spectra used today. Velocity controlled range versus acceleration controlled range.

Talk about some of the practical aspects of dealing with spectra for building design. Losss of signs for reactions and member forces. 90% mass participation, accidental torsion, limits on the scaling of spectral results....

 

[TERIO]

"Introduction to Structural Dynamics" by John M. Biggs is supposed to be pretty good for basics.