Defining a seismic response spectrum

Response spectrums for seismic analysis are managed in SCIA Engineer via the Seismic Spectrums library, which can be accessed from the main tree or the Libraries menu, in the Loads sub-branch (see picture below).

A new seismic spectrum can be defined in the Seismic spectra manager. It can also be used for editing of an earlier input spectrum. The manager is analogous to other SCIA Engineer database managers.

Pressing button [New] in the manager opens the dialogue for input of a new seismic spectrum. The dialogue consists of the following controls. The set of the control covered by the first table below can be used to define an arbitrary user-define spectrum.

See more detailed information about the definition of a seismic spectrum in the following sections, depending on the type of spectrum that you want to define.

Each response spectrum can be defined manually or imported from another application (via the clipboard), or defined using a generator. Spectrum generators are available for the following national standards:

• EN1998 - Eurocode
• IS - Indian standard
• CSN - Czech standard
• STN - Slovak standard
• ÖNORM - Austrian standard
• PS92 - French standard (obsolete)
• DIN - German standard
• Italian standard
• SIA 261:2020 - Swiss standard
• SIA 261:2003 - Swiss standard
• Romanian standard
• UBC - U.S. standard (obsolete)
• IBC - U.S. standard
• NPR 9998 - Netherlands standard