• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.141-148
• /
• 2020

For the important safety system, two or more units of identical equipment or redundant components with similar function were installed to prevent abnormal failure. If the failure probability of such equipment is independent, this redundancy could increase the system safety remarkably. However, if the failure of each component is highly correlated by installing in a structure or experiencing an earthquake event, the expected redundancy effect will decrease. Therefore, the seismic correlation of the equipment should be evaluated quantitatively for the seismic probabilistic safety assessment. The correlation effect can be explained in the procedure of constructing fragility curves. In this study, several methodologies to quantify the seismic correlation in the failure probability calculation for multiple components were reviewed and two possible ways considering the realistic situation were selected. Simple examples were tested to check the applicability of these methods. The conversion method between these two methods was suggested to render the evaluation using the advantages of each method possible.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.66 no.4
• /
• pp.515-529
• /
• 2018

Multiple hazards (multihazard) conditions may cause significant risk to structures that are originally designed for individual hazard scenarios. Such a multihazard condition arises when an earthquake strikes to a bridge pre-exposed to scour at foundations due to flood events. This study estimates the impact spectrum of flood-induced scour on seismic vulnerability of bridges. Characteristic river-crossing highway bridges are formed based on the information obtained from bridge inventories. These bridges are analyzed under earthquake-only and the abovementioned multihazard conditions, and bridge fragility curves are developed at component and system levels. Research outcome shows that bridges having pile shafts as foundation elements are protected from any additional seismic vulnerability due to the presence of scour. However, occurrence of floods can increase seismic fragility of bridges at lower damage states due to the adverse impact of scour on bridge components at superstructure level. These findings facilitate bridge design under the stated multihazard condition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.1
• /
• pp.386-400
• /
• 2022

Seismic fragility analysis, a part of seismic probabilistic risk assessment (SPRA), is commonly used to establish the relationship between a representative property of earthquakes and the failure probability of a structure, component, or system. Current guidelines on the SPRA of nuclear power plants (NPPs) used worldwide mainly reflect the earthquake characteristics of the western United States. However, different earthquake characteristics may have a significant impact on the seismic fragility of a structure. Given the concern, this study aimed to investigate the effects of earthquake characteristics on the seismic fragility of concrete containments housing the OPR-1000 reactor. Earthquake time histories were created from 30 ground motions (including those of the 2016 Gyeongju earthquake) by spectral matching to the site-specific response spectrum of Hanbit nuclear power plants in South Korea. Fragility curves of the containment structure were determined under the linear response history analysis using a lumped-mass stick model and 30 ground motions, and were compared in terms of earthquake characteristics. The results showed that the median capacity and high confidence of low probability of failure (HCLPF) tended to highly depend on the sustained maximum acceleration (SMA), and increase when using the time histories which have lower SMA compared with the others.

• Coupled systems mechanics
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.101-126
• /
• 2016

Seismic structural fragility constitutes an important step for performance based seismic design. Lateral load-resisting structural members are often analyzed under one component base excitation, while the effect of bi-directional shaking is accounted per simplified rules. Fragility curves are constructed herein under real bi-directional excitation by a simple extension of the conventional Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) under uni-directional shaking. Simple SODF systems, parametrically adjusted to different periods, are examined under a set of near-fault and far-fault excitations. Consideration of bi-directional interaction appears important for stiff systems. Further, the study indicates that the peak ground accelertaion, velocity and displacement (PGA, PGV and PGD) of accelerogram are relatively stable and efficient intensity measures for short, medium and long period systems respectively. '30%' combination rule seems to reasonably predict the fragility under bi-directional shaking at least for first mode dominated systems dealt herein up to a limit state of damage control.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.175-185
• /
• 2021

This study strives to highlight the importance of considering the vertical ground motions (VGM) in the seismic evaluation of RC buildings. To this aim, IDA (Incremental Dynamic Analysis) is conducted on three code-based designed high-rise RC frame-core wall buildings using a suite of earthquake records comprising of significant VGMs. To unravel the significance of the VGM inclusion on the performance of the buildings, IDAs are conducted in two states (with and without the vertical component), and subsequently based on each analysis, fragility curves are developed. Non-simulated collapse criteria are used to determine the collapse state drift ratio and the area under the velocity spectrum (SIm) is taken into account as the intensity measure. The outcome of this study delineates that the inclusion of VGM leads to the increase in the collapse vulnerability of the structures as well as to the change in the pattern of inter-story drifts and failure mode of the buildings. The results suggested that it would be more conservative if the VGM is included in the seismic assessment and the fragility analysis of RC buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.583-607
• /
• 2016

One of the main applications of seismic risk assessment is that an specific design could be selected for a bridge from different alternatives by considering damage losses alongside primary construction costs. Therefore, in this paper, the focus is on selecting the shape of pylon, which is a changeable component in the design of a cable-stayed bridge, as a double criterion decision-making problem. Different shapes of pylons include H, A, Y, and diamond shape, and the two criterion are construction costs and probable earthquake losses. In this research, decision-making is performed by using developed seismic risk assessment process as a powerful method. Considering the existing uncertainties in seismic risk assessment process, the combined incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) and uniform design (UD) based fragility assessment method is proposed, in which the UD method is utilized to provide the logical capacity models of the structure, and the IDA method is employed to give the probabilistic seismic demand model of structure. Using the aforementioned models and by defining damage states, the fragility curves of the bridge system are obtained for the different pylon shapes usage. Finally, by combining the fragility curves with damage losses and implementing the proposed cost-loss-benefit (CLB) method, the seismic risk assessment process is developed with financial-comparative approach. Thus, the optimal shape of the pylon can be determined using double criterion decision-making. The final results of decision-making study indicate that the optimal pylon shapes for the studied span of cable-stayed bridge are, respectively, H shape, diamond shape, Y shape, and A shape.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.445-452
• /
• 2010

In this paper an assessment of the internal pressure fragility of the CANDU type containment buildings is performed. The uncertainties of the performance of the containment buildings, material properties and tendon characteristics are referred from the in-service reports of Wolsung Unit 1. The containment buildings are modeled as a three-dimensional finite elements with considering the major opening and penetrations. A new method to evaluate the probabilistic fragility of the massive structural system is developed. The fragility curves of the target containment building are presented with repect to the failure modes and reliability levels. The center of wall is reveled as the most weak structural component of the containment building in the sense of the rupture and catastrophic rupture failure modes.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.187-197
• /
• 2020

Ground motion records are commonly used for fragility curves (FCs) developing utilized in seismic loss estimating analysis for earthquake prone zones. These records could be 'real', say the recorded acceleration time series or 'simulated' records consistent with the regional seismicity and produced by use of alternative simulation methods. This study has focused on fragility curves developing for masonry buildings through computational 'simulated' ground motion records while evaluating the properness of these fragilities compared to the curves generated by the use of 'real' records. Assessing the dynamic responses of structures, nonlinear computational time history analyses through the equivalent single degree of freedom systems have been implemented on OpenSees platform. Accordingly, computational structural analyses of multi-story 3D frame structures with different stiffening members considering soil interaction have been carried out with finite element software according to (1992) Earthquake East-West component. The obtained results have been compared to each frame regarding soil interaction. Conclusion and recommendations with the discuss of obtaining findings are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.53 no.7
• /
• pp.2396-2406
• /
• 2021

The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center has been developing a performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) methodology, which is based on explicit determination of performance, e.g., monetary losses, in a probabilistic manner where uncertainties in earthquake ground motion, structural response, damage estimation, and losses are explicitly considered. To carry out the PEER PBEE procedure for a component of the nuclear power plant (NPP) such as the cable tray system, hazard curve and spectra were defined for two hazard levels of the ground motions, namely, operation basis earthquake, and safe shutdown earthquake. Accordingly, two sets of spectral compatible ground motions were selected for dynamic analysis of the cable tray system. In general, the PBEE analysis of the cable tray in NPP was introduced where the resulting floor motions from the time history analysis (THA) of the NPP structure should be used as the input motion to the cable tray. However, for simplicity, a finite element model of the cable tray was developed for THA under the effect of the selected ground motions. Based on the structural analysis results, fragility curves were generated in terms of specific engineering demand parameters. Loss analysis was performed considering monetary losses corresponding to the predefined damage states. Then, overall losses were evaluated for different damage groups using the PEER PBEE methodology.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.367-392
• /
• 2020

The specific characteristics of near-field earthquake records can lead to different dynamic responses of bridges compared to far-field records. However, the effect of near-field strong ground motion has often been neglected in the seismic performance assessment of the bridges. Furthermore, damage to horizontally curved multi-frame RC box-girder bridges in the past earthquakes has intensified the potential of seismic vulnerability of these structures due to their distinctive dynamic behavior. Based on the nonlinear time history analyses in OpenSEES, this article, assesses the effects of near-field versus far-field earthquakes on the seismic performance of horizontally curved multi-frame RC box-girder bridges by accounting the vertical component of the earthquake records. Analytical seismic fragility curves have been derived thru considering uncertainties in the earthquake records, material and geometric properties of bridges. The findings indicate that near-field effects reasonably increase the seismic vulnerability in this bridge sub-class. The results pave the way for future regional risk assessments regarding the importance of either including or excluding near-field effects on the seismic performance of horizontally curved bridges.