Unique method for generating design earthquake time history seeds

A method has been developed which takes a single seed earthquake time history and produces multiple similar seed earthquake time histories. These new time histories possess important frequency and cumulative energy attributes of the original while having a correlation less than 30% (per the ASCE/SEI 43-05 Section 2.4 [1]). They are produced by taking the fast Fourier transform of the original seed. The averaged amplitudes are then pared with random phase angles and the inverse fast Fourier transform is taken to produce a new time history. The average amplitude through time is then adjusted to encourage a similar cumulative energy curve. Next, the displacement is modified to approximate the original curve using Fourier techniques. Finally, the correlation is checked to ensure it is less than 30%. This process does not guarantee that the correlation will be less than 30% for all of a given set of new curves. It does provide a simple tool where a few additional iterations of the process should produce a set of seed earthquake time histories meeting the correlation criteria.