• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.353-363
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• 2017

The present study considers a multi-span continuous bridge, isolated by lead rubber bearing (LRB). Dynamic soilstructure interaction (SSI) is modelled with the help of a simplified, sway-rocking model for different types of soil. It is well understood from the literature that SSI influences the structural responses and the isolator performance. However, the abovementioned effect of SSI also depends on the earthquake ground motion properties. It is very important to understand how the interaction between soil and structure varies with the earthquake ground motion characteristics but, as far as the knowledge of the authors go, no study has been carried out to investigate this effect. Therefore, the objectives of the present study are to investigate the influence of earthquake ground motion characteristics on: (a) the responses of a multi span bridge (isolated and non-isolated), (b) the performance of the isolator and, most importantly, (c) the soil-structure interaction. Statistical analyses are conducted by considering 14 earthquakes which are selected in such a way that they can be categorized into three frequency content groups according to their peak ground acceleration to peak ground velocity (PGA/PGV) ratio. Lumped mass model of the bridge is developed and time history analyses are carried out by solving the governing equations of motion in the state space form. The performance of the isolator is studied by comparing the responses of the bridge with those of the corresponding uncontrolled bridge (i.e., non-isolated bridge). On studying the effect of earthquake motions, it is observed that the earthquake ground motion characteristics affect the interaction between soil and structure in such a way that the responses decrease with increase in frequency content of the earthquake for all the types of soil considered. The reverse phenomenon is observed in case of the isolator performance where the control efficiencies increase with frequency content of earthquake.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.147-162
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• 2010

The ground acceleration measured at a point on the earth's surface is composed of several waves that have different phase velocities, arrival times, amplitudes, and frequency contents. For instance, body waves contain primary and secondary waves that have high frequency content and reach the site first. Surface waves are composed of Rayleigh and Love waves that have lower phase velocity, lower frequency content and reach the site next. Some of these waves could be of more damage to the structure depending on their frequency content and associated amplitude. This paper models critical earthquake loads for single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) inelastic structures considering evolution of the seismic waves in time and frequency. The ground acceleration is represented as combination of seismic waves with different characteristics. Each seismic wave represents the energy of the ground motion in certain frequency band and time interval. The amplitudes and phase angles of these waves are optimized to produce the highest damage in the structure subject to explicit constraints on the energy and the peak ground acceleration and implicit constraints on the frequency content and the arrival time of the seismic waves. The material nonlinearity is modeled using bilinear inelastic law. The study explores also the influence of the properties of the seismic waves on the energy demand and damage state of the structure. Numerical illustrations on modeling critical earthquake excitations for one-storey inelastic frame structures are provided.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.75-85
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• 2022

The megacity Istanbul was struck by an earthquake on September 26, 2019, with a moment magnitude (Mw) of 5.8. The mainshock was followed by many aftershocks. Although the peak ground acceleration (PGA) of the mainshock was as low as 0.08 g, its effect has been more than expected. The intensive reconnaissance studies were accomplished in the highly populated Zeytinburnu and Pendik districts of Istanbul. While the earthquake (EQ) was relatively smaller concerning record-specific intensity measures; the damages such as concrete spalling in reinforced concrete (RC) members, detachment and diagonal cracking of infill walls in RC frames as well as cracks in masonry structures were reported from non-engineered and some engineered buildings. Many studies in the literature state that record-specific intensity measures are not sufficient to evaluate the seismic performance of the structures. The structure-specific intensity measures, soil characteristics, as well as significant duration, energy, and frequency content of EQs should be considered for the evaluation. Dependently, the frequency and energy contents of the Istanbul Earthquake are evaluated to discuss the possible reasons for the perceived effects and the damages. It is concluded that the EQ caused resonance effects on a variety of structures because of its complex frequency content as well as rather low building quality.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.209-221
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• 2009

A control algorithm for seismic protection of building structures based on the theory of variable structural control or sliding mode control is presented. The paper focus in the design of sliding surface. A method for determining the sliding surface by pole assignment algorithm where the poles of the system in the sliding surface are obtained on-line, based on the frequency content of the incoming earthquake signal applied to the structure, is proposed. The proposed algorithm consists of the following steps: (i) On-line FFT process is applied to the incoming part of the signal and its frequency content is recognized. (ii) A transformation of the frequency content to the complex plane is performed and the desired location of poles of the controlled structure on the sliding surface is estimated. (iii) Based on the estimated poles the sliding surface is obtained. (iv) Then, the control force which will drive the response trajectory into the estimated sliding surface and force it to stay there all the subsequent time is obtained using Lyapunov stability theory. The above steps are repeated continuously for the entire duration of the incoming earthquake. The potential applications and the effectiveness of the improved control algorithm are demonstrated by numerical examples. The simulation results indicate that the response of a structure is reduced significantly compared to the response of the uncontrolled structure, while the required control demand is achievable.

• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.169-180
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• 2012

The performance of pure friction isolation system with respect to the frequency bandwidth of excitation and the predominant frequency is investigated. A set of earthquake ground motions (artificial as well as recorded [with different combinations of magnitude-distance and local site geology]) is considered for investigating effectiveness of pure friction isolators. The results indicate the performance of pure friction base isolated system does not only depend upon coefficient of friction and mass ratio but the stick-slip behaviour depends upon the frequency content of the excitation as well. Slippage prevails if the excitation frequency lies in a suitable frequency range. This range widens with increasing mass ratio. For larger mass ratios, the sliding effect is more pronounced and the maximum acceleration response is further reduced in the neighbourhood of frequency ratio (${\omega}/{\omega}_n$) of unity. The pure friction isolation system is effective in the case of broadband excitations only and that too, in the acceleration sensitive range of periods. The pure friction system is not effective for protection against narrow band motions for which the system response is quasi-periodic.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.82-89
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• 2003

Near-field ground motions exhibit special characteristics that are different from ordinary far-field ground motions. In this study the shaking table tests were conducted to evaluate the effect of earthquake ground motions with different characteristics on the response of the structure. The ground motions used in this study were the scenario earthquake, design earthquake, and Chi-Chi earthquake measured in TCU052 station. These earthquakes have different frequency contents. The test results show that the frequency content of ground motion is very important to the response of structures. The floor responses of structure were greatly affected by the higher modal frequencies, as well as the fundamental frequency. The responses of third floor were significantly reduced due to the interaction between the structure and the base isolated mass installed at the third floor.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.35-42
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• 2002

Frequency responses for most of the local seismic sensors in Korea have been roughly checked by mutual comparison of Fourier spectra of seismic records from accelerometer and seismometer, both of which are installed at the same location. Especially, because the frequency content of the seismic energy is usually above 1 Hz for local earthquakes, the reliability of low frequency response could have not been evaluated. Fortunately a recent large earthquake, Ms=7.2 on 02/06/29 containing dominant low frequency energy makes it possible to check the low frequency response of the seismic sensors, especially EpiSensor and JC-V100. Considering two types of sensor pairs, (STS-2 and EpiSensor, JC-V100 and EpiSensor), the low frequency response of EpiSensor is confirmed first by comparison with STS-2 which has proved low frequency response. Second, reliable low frequency limit of instrumentally corrected seismic data from JC-V100 data is estimated to be about 0.03 Hz by comparison with EpiSensor data.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.72-82
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• 1999

The microearthquake and explosion events recorded in the seismic KNUE(Korea National University of Education) network were analyzed. The seismic data were recorded from Dec. 1997 to Dec. 1998. Total of 118 records consisted of 24 earthquake and 4 explosion events were instrumented at 6 stations. Spectral values increases as magnitude increases and the predominant frequency band expands to low frequency. zone as magnitude increases. Three-dimensional spectrograms(time frequency. amplitude) were also synthesized in order to discriminate microearthquakes and artificial underground explosions. The waves from microearthquakes show that frequency content of dominant amplitude appeared above 10 Hz and the discrimination can be performed in almost all the frequency domain of 3-d spectrogram.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.145-150
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• 1999

In the nonlinear dynamic structural analysis, the given ground excitation as an input should be well defined. Because of the lack of recorded accelerograms in Korea, it is required to generate an artificial earthquake by a stochastic model of ground excitation with various dynamic properties rather than recorded accelerograms. It is well known that earthquake motions are generally non-stationary with time-varying intensity and frequency content. Many researchers have proposed non-stationary random process models. Yeh and Wen (1990) proposed a non-stationary stochastic process model which can be modeled as components with an intensity function, a frequency modulation function and a power spectral density function to describe such non-stationary characteristics. This paper shows the process to generate nonstationary artificial earthquake ground motions considering target design response spectrum chosen by ATC14.