Significance of seismic response spectrum normalization in nuclear power plant design

Peak ground acceleration has been used most commonly to normalize seismic response spectra. Apparently, there is a general consensus that this is not the best parameter for spectrum normalization. Several other parameters have been proposed, such as, peak acceleration-velocity-displacement triad, peak velocity and spectrum intensity. This paper presents statistical studies of response spectra from a number of recorded earthquake motions normalized by several different parameters. The parameters used are peak acceleration, peak velocity, spectrum intensity, spectrum ordinate, etc. Spectrum shapes are generated corresponding to 84 percentile probability level for different normalization parameters. These shapes are compared with the other standrad spectrum shapes used in the nuclear power plant design to investigate significance of different normalization techniques.