%0 Journal Article %T Numerical Study on Energy Dissipation of Steel Moment Resisting Frames under Effect of Earthquake Vibrations %A Mohsen Gerami %A Davood Abdollahzadeh %J Advances in Acoustics and Vibration %D 2014 %I Hindawi Publishing Corporation %R 10.1155/2014/510593 %X In the regions near to active faults, if the fault rupture propagation is towards the site and the shear wave propagation velocity is near the velocity of fault rupture propagation, the forward directivity effect causes pulse-like long-period large-amplitude vibrations perpendicular to the fault plane which causes a large amount of energy to be imposed to structures in a short time. According to previous investigations, the amounts of input and dissipated energies in the structure represent the general performance of the structure and show the level of damage and flexibility of the structure against earthquake. Therefore, in this study, the distribution of damage in the structure height and its amount at the height of steel moment frames under the pulse-like vibrations in the near fault region has been investigated. The results of this study show that the increase rate of earthquake input energy with respect to increase in the number of stories of the structure in the near field of fault is triple that in the far field of fault which then leads to a 2¨C2.5 times increase in the earthquake input energy in the high rise moment frames in the near field of fault with respect to that in the far field of fault. 1. Introduction In recent decades, the energy concepts have found their way in the earthquake engineering, in such a way that energy concepts now have applications in optimization design [1] and vulnerability evaluation of the structures under earthquake and therefore researchers have proposed some methods for designing the structures [2]. Housner was the first one who brought about the energy method for the seismic design [3, 4] and in 1999, designing of moment frames according to energy was proposed by Leelataviwat et al. [5, 6]. The common seismic design methods which are based on strength demand and deformation control estimate the earthquake intensity by means of Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) or Effective Peak Acceleration (EPA) ( is average spectral acceleration of velocity-sensitive region of response spectrum (ATC 3-06, 1978)) and then estimate the earthquake forces imposed on the structure by response spectrum, main period, and the effective weight of the structure. These methods do not consider the duration parameter of earthquake and its effect on the structure hysteresis behavior, while in the seismic design methods which are based on energy all the structure and earthquake parameters such as frequency, earthquake duration, and structure specifications such as ductility, damping, the structure natural oscillation period, and hysteresis %U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aav/2014/510593/