• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.723-740
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• 2015

In this study, the seismic performance of skewed highway bridges has been assessed by using fragility function methodology. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) has been used to prepare complete information about the different damage states of a 30 degree skewed highway bridge. A three dimensional model of a skewed highway bridge is presented and incremental dynamic analysis has been applied. The details of the full nonlinear procedures have also been presented. Different spectral intensity measures are studied and the effects of the period on the fragility curves are shown in different figures. The efficiency, practicality and proficiency of these different spectral intensity measures are compared. A suite of 20 earthquake ground motions are considered for nonlinear time history analysis. It has been shown that, considering different intensity measures (IM) leads us to overestimate or low estimate the damage probability which has been discussed completely.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.285-292
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• 2020

The methodology classifying structural types of concrete buildings in the existing seismic fragility functions is too simple to estimate the fragility of existing residential buildings and neighborhood living facilities, especially those below five stories. Their structural types are dependent on information contained in the building register such as main use, total floor area, story, permission date, and first story floor area of the individual building. All of this information is not considered for classifying types in the existing functions; therefore, the goal of this study was to suggest a methodology that classifies structural types of concrete buildings by utilizing such information. The results of this study showed that the suggested methodology can classify structural types better than the existing methodology. Nevertheless, there is still a need to simplify the methodology because fragility estimation demands quickness rather than accuracy.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.419-427
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• 2017

A methodology, based on fragility functions, is proposed to evaluate the seismic performance of seismic isolated $45^{\circ}$ skewed concrete bridge: 1) twelve types of seismic isolation devices are considered based on two different design parameters 2) fragility functions of a three-span bridge with and without seismic isolation devices are analytically evaluated based on 3D nonlinear incremental dynamic analyses which seismic input consists of 20 selected ground motions. The optimum combinations of isolation device design parameters are identified comparing, for different limit states, the performance of 1) the Seismic Isolated Bridges (SIB) and 2) Not Seismic Isolated Bridge (NSIB) designed according to the AASHTO standards.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.89-96
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• 2018

The paper presents the damage estimation of bridge structures in Daegu city based on the scenario-based earthquakes. Since the fragility curves for domestic bridge strucures are limited, the Hazus methodology is employed to derive the fragility curves and estimate the damage. A total of four earthuquake scenarios near Daegu city are assumed and structure damage is investigated for 81 bridge structures. The seismic fragility function and damage level of each bridge had adopted from the analytical method in HAZUS and then, the damage probability using seismic fragility function for each bridge was evaluated. It was concluded that the seismic damage to bridges was higher when the magnitude of the earthquake was large or nearer to the epicenter.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.5
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• pp.577-591
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• 2022

This paper develops a comparatively time-efficient methodology for performing seismic fragility analysis of the reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in the presence of uncertainty sources. It aims to appraise the effectiveness of any variation in the material's mechanical properties as epistemic uncertainty, and the record-to-record variation as aleatory uncertainty in structural response. In this respect, the fuzzy set theory, a well-known 𝛼-cut approach, and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) assess the median of collapse fragility curves as a fuzzy response. GA is requisite for searching the maxima and minima of the objective function (median fragility herein) in each membership degree, 𝛼. As this is a complicated and time-consuming process, the authors propose utilizing the Gene Expression Programming-based (GEP-based) equation for reducing the computational analysis time of the case study building significantly. The results indicate that the proposed structural analysis algorithm on the derived GEP model is able to compute the fuzzy median fragility about 33.3% faster, with errors less than 1%.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.894-903
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• 2019

An approach for collapse risk assessment is proposed to evaluate the vulnerability of electric cabinet in nuclear power plants. The lognormal approaches, namely maximum likelihood estimation and linear regression, are introduced to establish the fragility curves. These two fragility analyses are applied for the numerical models of cabinets considering various boundary conditions, which are expressed by representing restrained and anchored models at the base. The models have been built and verified using the system identification (SI) technique. The fundamental frequency of the electric cabinet is sensitive because of many attached devices. To bypass this complex problem, the average spectral acceleration $S_{\bar{a}}$ in the range of period that cover the first mode period is chosen as an intensity measure on the fragility function. The nonlinear time history analyses for cabinet are conducted using a suite of 40 ground motions. The obtained curves with different approaches are compared, and the variability of risk assessment is evaluated for restrained and anchored models. The fragility curves obtained for anchored model are found to be closer each other, compared to the fragility curves for restrained model. It is also found that the support boundary conditions played a significant role in acceleration response of cabinet.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.847-867
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• 2014

There are continuous efforts to mitigate structural losses from earthquakes and manage risk through seismic risk assessment; seismic fragility curves are widely accepted as an essential tool of such efforts. Seismic fragility curves can be classified into four groups based on how they are derived: empirical, judgmental, analytical, and hybrid. Analytical fragility curves are the most widely used and can be further categorized into two subgroups, depending on whether an analytical function or simulation method is used. Although both methods have shown decent performances for many seismic fragility problems, they often oversimplify the given problems in reliability or structural analyses owing to their built-in assumptions. In this paper, a new method is proposed for the development of seismic fragility curves. Integration with sophisticated software packages for reliability analysis (FERUM) and structural analysis (ZEUS-NL) allows the new method to obtain more accurate seismic fragility curves for less computational cost. Because the proposed method performs reliability analysis using the first-order reliability method, it provides component probabilities as well as useful byproducts and allows further fragility analysis at the system level. The new method was applied to a numerical example of a 2D frame structure, and the results were compared with those by Monte Carlo simulation. The method was found to generate seismic fragility curves more accurately and efficiently. Also, the effect of system reliability analysis on the development of seismic fragility curves was investigated using the given numerical example and its necessity was discussed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.503-515
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• 2022

This paper presents the development of seismic fragility curves for a precast reinforced concrete bridge instrumented with a structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The bridge is located near an active seismic fault in the Dominican Republic (DR) and provides the only access to several local communities in the aftermath of a potential damaging earthquake; moreover, the sample bridge was designed with outdated building codes and uses structural detailing not adequate for structures in seismic regions. The bridge was instrumented with an SHM system to extract information about its state of structural integrity and estimate its seismic performance. The data obtained from the SHM system is integrated with structural models to develop a set of fragility curves to be used as a quantitative measure of the expected damage; the fragility curves provide an estimate of the probability that the structure will exceed different damage limit states as a function of an earthquake intensity measure. To obtain the fragility curves a digital twin of the bridge is developed combining a computational finite element model and the information extracted from the SHM system. The digital twin is used as a response prediction tool that minimizes modeling uncertainty, significantly improving the predicting capability of the model and the accuracy of the fragility curves. The digital twin was used to perform a nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with selected ground motions that are consistent with the seismic fault and site characteristics. The fragility curves show that for the maximum expected acceleration (with a 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years) the structure has a 62% probability of undergoing extensive damage. This is the first study presenting fragility curves for civil infrastructure in the DR and the proposed methodology can be extended to other structures to support disaster mitigation and post-disaster decision-making strategies.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.265-273
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• 2023

This study proposes a methodology for the regional seismic risk assessment of structural damage to buildings in Korea based on evaluating individual buildings, considering inconsistency between the administrative district border and grid lines to define seismic hazard. The accuracy of seismic hazards was enhanced by subdividing the current 2km-sized grids into ones with a smaller size. Considering the enhancement of the Korean seismic design code in 2005, existing seismic fragility functions for seismically designed buildings are revised by modifying the capacity spectrum according to the changes in seismic design load. A seismic risk index in building damage is defined using the total damaged floor area considering building size differences. The proposed seismic risk index was calculated for buildings in 29 administrative districts in 'A' city in Korea to validate the proposed assessment algorithm and risk index. In the validation procedure, sensitivity analysis was performed on the grid size, quantitative building damage measure, and seismic fragility function update.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.325-343
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• 2018

This study aims to propose a performance-based design method of a novel passive base isolation system, BIO isolation system, which is inspired by an energy dissipation mechanism called 'sacrificial bonds and hidden length'. Fragility functions utilized in this study are derived, indicating the probability that a component, element, or system will be damaged as a function of a single predictive demand parameter. Based on PEER framework methodology for Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE), a systematic design procedure using performance and fragility objectives is presented. Base displacement, superstructure absolute acceleration and story drift ratio are selected as engineering demand parameters. The new design method is then performed on a general two degree-of-freedom (2DOF) structure model and the optimal design under different seismic intensities is obtained through numerical analysis. Seismic performances of the biologically inspired (BIO) isolation system are compared with that of the linear isolation system. To further demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this method, the BIO isolation system of a 4-storey reinforced concrete building is designed and investigated. The newly designed BIO isolators effectively decrease the superstructure responses and base displacement under selected earthquake excitations, showing good seismic performance.