A new model order reduction strategy adapted to nonlinear problems in earthquake engineering

Earthquake dynamic response analysis of large complex structures, especially in the presence of nonlinearities, usually turns out to be computationally expensive. In this paper, the methodical developments of a new model order reduction strategy (MOR) based on the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method as well as its practical applicability to a realistic building structure are presented. The seismic performance of the building structure, a medical complex, is to be improved by means of base isolation realized by frictional pendulum bearings. According to the new introduced MOR strategy, a set of deterministic POD modes (transformation matrix) is assembled, which is derived based on the information of parts of the response history, so‐called snapshots, of the structure under a representative earthquake excitation. Subsequently, this transformation matrix is utilized to create reduced‐order models of the structure subjected to different earthquake excitations. These sets of nonlinear low‐order representations are now solved in a fractional amount of time in comparison with the computations of the full (non‐reduced) systems. The results demonstrate accurate approximations of the physical (full) responses by means of this new MOR strategy if the probable behavior of the structure has already been captured in the POD snapshots. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.