• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.169-188
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• 2015

This study presents the effects of the spatial variation of ground motions in a hard rock site on the seismic responses of a base-isolated nuclear power plant (BI-NPP). Three structural models were studied for the BI-NPP supported by different number of lead rubber bearing (LRB) base isolators with different base mat dimensions. The seismic responses of the BI-NPP were analyzed and investigated under the uniform and spatial varying excitation of El Centro ground motion. In addition, the rotational degrees of freedom (DOFs) of the base mat nodes were taken to consider the flexural behavior of the base mat on the seismic responses under both uniform and spatial varying excitation. Finally, the seismic response results for all the analysis cases of the BI-NPP were investigated in terms of the vibration periods and mode shapes, lateral displacements, and base shear forces. The analysis results indicate that: (1) considering the flexural behavior of the base mat has a negligible effect on the lateral displacements of base isolators regardless of the number of the isolators or the type of excitation used; (2) considering the spatial variation of ground motions has a substantial influence on the lateral displacements of base isolators and the NPP stick model; (3) the ground motion spatial variation effect is more prominent on lateral displacements than base shear forces, particularly with increasing numbers of base isolators and neglecting flexural behavior of the base mat.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.517-530
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• 2014

Seismic ground response analysis is one of the most important issues in geotechnical earthquake engineering. Conventional seismic site response and free field analysis of layered soils does not consider the effect of surcharge mass which may be present on the top layer. Surcharge mass may develop extra inertial force to the soil and, hence, significantly affect on the results of seismic ground response analysis. Methods of analysis of ground response may also be categorized into time domain and frequency domain concepts. Simplicity in developing analytical relations and accuracy in considering soil dynamic properties dependency to loading frequency are benefits of frequency domain analysis. In this part of the paper, seismic ground response is analyzed using transfer function method for soil layers considering surcharge mass on the top layer. Equation of motion, wave equation, is solved using amended boundary conditions which effectively take the impact of surcharge mass into account. A computer program is developed by MATLAB software based on the solution method developed for wave equation. Layered soils subjected to earthquake loading were numerically studied and solved especially by the computer program developed in this research. Results obtained were compared with those given by DEEP SOIL computer program. Such comparison showed the accuracy of the program developed in this study. Also in this part, the effects of geometrical and mechanical properties of soil layers and especially the impact of surcharge mass on transfer function are investigated using the current approach and the program developed. The efficiency and accuracy of the method developed here is shown through some worked examples and through comparison of the results obtained here with those given by other approaches. Discussions on the results obtained are presented throughout in this part.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2012

In this paper, the reduction factors to calculate the site coefficients of an embedded foundation are estimated, considering the effect of a poor backfill for the seismic design of a building built on an embedded foundation. This is determined by utilizing in-house finite element software, P3DASS, which has the capability of horizontal pseudo 3D seismic analysis with nonlinear soil. The 30m thick soil on stiff rock was assumed to be homogeneous, elastic, viscous and isotropic, and equivalent circular rigid foundations with radii of 10-70m were assumed to be embedded 0, 10, 20, and 30 m in the soil. Seismic analyses were performed with 7 bedrock earthquake records de-convoluted from the outcrop records; the scaling of the peak ground accelerations were to 0.1 g. The study results show that the site coefficients of a poor-backfilled foundation are gradually reduced as the foundation embedment ratio increases, except in the case of a small foundation embedded deeply in the weak soft soil. In addition, it was found that the deviation of the site coefficients due to the foundation size was not significant. Therefore, the typical reduction factors of an embedded foundation with poor backfill are proposed in terms of the shear wave velocity and site class. This is in order to find the site coefficients of an embedded foundation by multiplying the reduction factor by a site coefficient of a surface foundation specified in the design code. They can then be interpolated to determine the intermediate shear wave velocity.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.233-247
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• 2006

Most codes of practice state that for large in-plane structures it is necessary to account for the spatial variability of earthquake ground motion. There are essentially three effects that contribute for this variation: (i) wave passage effect, due to finite propagation velocity; (ii) incoherence effect, due to differences in superposition of waves; and (iii) the local site amplification due to spatial variation in geological conditions. This paper discusses the procedures to be undertaken in the time domain analysis of a cable-stayed bridge under spatial variability of earthquake ground motion. The artificial synthesis of correlated displacements series that simulate the earthquake load is discussed first. Next, it is described the 3D model of the International Guadiana Bridge used for running tests with seismic analysis. A comparison of the effects produced by seismic waves with different apparent propagation velocities and different geological conditions is undertaken. The results in this study show that the differences between the analysis with and without spatial variability of earthquake ground motion can be important for some displacements and internal forces, especially those influenced by symmetric modes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1463-1480
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• 2015

This research aims to develop an empirical model for simulation of time-varying frequency in earthquake ground motion so as to be used easily in engineering applications. Briefly, 10545 recordings of the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) global database of accelerograms from shallow crustal earthquakes are selected and binned by magnitude, distance and site condition. Then the wavelet spectrum of each acceleration record is calculated by using one-dimensional continuous wavelet transform, and the frequencies corresponding to the maximum values of the wavelet spectrum at a series of sampling time, named predominant frequencies, are extracted to analyze the variation of frequency content of seismic ground motions in time. And the time-variation of the predominant frequencies of 178 magnitude-distance-site bins for different directions are obtained by calculating the mean square root of predominant frequencies within a bin. The exponential trigonometric function is then use to fit the data, which describes the predominant frequency of ground-motion as a function of time with model parameters given in tables for different magnitude, distance, site conditions and direction. Finally, a practical frequency-dependent amplitude envelope function is developed based on the time-varying frequency derived in this paper, which has clear statistical parameters and can emphasize the effect of low-frequency components on later seismic action. The results illustrate that the time-varying predominant frequency can preferably reflect the non-stationarity of the frequency content in earthquake ground motions and that empirical models given in this paper facilitates the simulation of ground motions.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.11
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• pp.71-80
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• 2018

In this study, the seismic response of cut-and-cover box tunnels is evaluated from pseudo-static analyses and the fragility curves are derived. A series of site profiles were used to evaluate the effect of soil conditions. A total of 20 ground motions were used. The fragility curves were developed as functions of peak ground acceleration for three damage states, which are minor, moderate, and extensive states. The damage indices, defined as the ratio of the elastic moment to the yield moment, correlated to three damage states, were used. The curves are shown to greatly depend on the site profile. The curves are further compared to those derived in previous studies. The widely used empirically derived curves are shown not to account for the site effects, and therefore underestimate the response for soft sites.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.429-436
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• 2014

This paper presents the seismic performance of a geometrically unsymmetrical reinforced concrete building considering torsional effect and material nonlinearity of concrete and steel. The reinforced concrete building is a structure for seismic performance evaluation in the SMART-2013 international benchmark program. Nonlinear constitutive models for concrete and steel were constructed, and their numerical performance was demonstrated by various local tests. Modal analysis showed that the first three natural frequencies and mode shapes were close to the experimental results from the SMART-2013 program. In the time history analysis for low-intensity seismic loadings, displacement and acceleration responses at sampling points were similar to the experimental results. In the end, nonlinear time history analysis was conducted for Northridge earthquake to predict the behavior of the reinforced concrete structure under high-intensity seismic loadings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.297-307
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• 2017

Evaluation on the sidesway seismic collapse capacity of the widely used low- and medium-height structures is meaningful. These structures with such type of collapse are recognized that behave as inelastic deteriorating single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems. To incorporate the deteriorating effects, the hysteretic loop of the nonlinear SDOF structural model is represented by a tri-linear force-displacement relationship. The concept of collapse capacity spectra are adopted, where the incremental dynamic analysis is performed to check the collapse point and a normalized ground motion intensity measure corresponding to the collapse point is used to define the collapse capacity. With a large amount of earthquake ground motions, a systematic parameter study, i.e., the influences of various ground motion parameters (site condition, magnitude, distance to rupture, and near-fault effect) as well as various structural parameters (damping, ductility, degrading stiffness, pinching behavior, accumulated damage, unloading stiffness, and P-delta effect) on the structural collapse capacity has been performed. The analytical formulas for the collapse capacity spectra considering above influences have been presented so as to quickly predict the structural collapse capacities.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.25-33
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• 2011

In the nonlinear response history analysis of building structures, the input ground accelerations have considerable effect on the nonlinear response characteristics of structural systems. As the properties of the ground motion, using time history analysis, are interrelated with many factors such as the fault mechanism, the seismic wave propagation from source to site, and the amplification characteristics of the soil, it is difficult to properly select the input ground motions for seismic response analysis. In this paper, the most unfavourable real seismic design ground motions were selected as input motions. The artificial earthquake waves were generated according to these earthquake events. The artificial waves have identical phase angles to the recorded earthquake waves, and their overall response spectra are compatible with the seismic design spectrum with 5% of critical viscous damping. It is concluded that the artificial earthquake waves simulated in this paper are applicable as input ground motions for a seismic response analysis of building structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.583-593
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• 2018

Seismic performance is particularly important for life-line structures, especially for long-span transmission tower line system subjected to multi-component ground motions. However, the influence of multi-component seismic loads and the coupling effect between supporting towers and transmission lines are not taken into consideration in the current seismic design specifications. In this research, shake table tests are conducted to investigate the performance of long-span transmission tower-line system under multi-component seismic excitations. For reproducing the genuine structural responses, the reduced-scale experimental model of the prototype is designed and constructed based on the Buckingham's theorem. And three commonly used seismic records are selected as the input ground motions according to the site soil condition of supporting towers. In order to compare the experimental results, the dynamic responses of transmission tower-line system subjected to single-component and two-component ground motions are also studied using shake table tests. Furthermore, an empirical model is proposed to evaluate the acceleration and member stress responses of transmission tower-line system subjected to multi-component ground motions. The results demonstrate that the ground motions with multi-components can amplify the dynamic response of transmission tower-line system, and transmission lines have a significant influence on the structural response and should not be neglected in seismic analysis. The experimental results can provide a reference for the seismic design and analysis of long-span transmission tower-line system subjected to multi-component ground motions.