• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.759-774
• /
• 2017

Earthquake concerns have grown after a remarkable earthquake incident on September 12th, 2016 in Gyeongju, Korea. Earthquake forecasting is gaining in importance in order to guarantee infrastructure safety and develop protection policies. In this paper, we adopt a power-law distribution model to fit past earthquake occurrences in Korea with various historical and modern seismological records. We estimated power-law distribution parameters using empirical distributions and calculated the future probabilities for large earthquake events based on our model. We provide the probability that a future event has a larger magnitude than given levels, and the probability that a future event over certain levels will occur in a given period of time. This model contributes to the assessment of latent seismological risk in Korea by estimating future earthquake probabilities.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.7
• /
• pp.2529-2539
• /
• 2022

Stochastic and an empirical Green's function (EGF) methods are preliminarily applied to simulate strong ground motions (SGMs) at seismic stations within nuclear power plant (NPP) sites in South Korea by an assumed large earthquake with M_W6.5 (scenario earthquake) on the causative fault of the 2016 Gyeongju earthquake with M_W5.5 (mainshock). In the stochastic method, a ratio of spectral amplitudes of observed and simulated waveforms for the mainshock is assumed to be an adjustment factor. In the EGF method, SGMs by the mainshock are simulated assuming SGMs by the 2016 Gyeongju earthquake with M_W5.0 (foreshock) as the EGF. To simulate SGMs by the scenario earthquake, a ratio of fault length to width is assumed to be 2:1 in the stochastic method, and SGMs by the mainshock are assumed to be EGF in the EGF method. The results are similar based on a bias of the simulated response spectra by the two methods, and the simulated response spectra by the two methods exceeded commonly standard design response spectra anchored at 0.3 g of NPP sites slightly at a frequency band above 4 Hz, but considerable attention to interpretation is required since it is an indirect comparison.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.237-246
• /
• 2022

Based on the random-vibration-theory methodology, dynamic responses of nuclear facilities subjected to obliquely incidental and incoherent earthquake ground motions are calculated. The spectral power density functions of the 6-degree-of-freedom motions of a rigid foundation due to the incoherent ground motions are obtained with the local wave scattering and wave passage effects taken into consideration. The spectral power density function for the pseudo-acceleration of equipment installed on a structural floor is derived. The spectral acceleration of the equipment or the in-structure response spectrum is then estimated using the peak factors of random vibration. The approach is applied to nuclear power plant structures installed on half-spaces, and the reduction of high-frequency earthquake responses due to obliquely incident incoherent earthquake ground motions is examined. The influences of local wave scattering and wave passage effects are investigated for three half-spaces with different shear-wave velocities. When the shear-wave velocity is sufficiently large like hard rock, the local wave scattering significantly affects the reduction of the earthquake responses. In the cases of rock or soft rock, the earthquake responses of structures are further affected by the incident angles of seismic waves or the wave passage effects.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.205-215
• /
• 2010

Recently, earthquake proof technology has been widely applied to both new and existing structures and bridges. The analysis of bridge systems equipped with structural control devices, which possess large degrees of freedom and nonlinear characteristics, is a result in time-consuming task. Therefore, a piecewise exact solution is proposed in this study to simplify the seismic mitigation analysis process for bridge systems equipped with sliding-type isolators. In this study, the simplified system having two degrees of freedom, to reasonably represent the large number of degrees of freedom of a bridge, and is modeled to obtain a piecewise exact solution for system responses during earthquakes. Simultaneously, we used the nonlinear finite element computer program to analyze the bridge responses and verify the accuracy of the proposed piecewise exact solution for bridge systems equipped with sliding-type isolators. The conclusions derived by comparing the results obtained from the piecewise exact solution and nonlinear finite element analysis reveal that the proposed solution not only simplifies the calculation process but also provides highly accurate seismic responses of isolated bridges under earthquakes.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.177-186
• /
• 2016

Along the subduction-zone of the western Japanese islands, large earthquakes are expected occur around the middle of this century, and long-period ground motions will reach major urban areas, shaking high-rise buildings violently. Since some old high-rise buildings were designed without considering long-period ground motions, reinforcing such buildings is an important issue. An effective method to reinforce existing high-rise buildings is installing additional dampers. However, a problem with ordinary dampers is that they require reinforcement of surrounding columns and girders to support large reaction forces generated during earthquake ground motion. To solve this problem, a deformation-dependent oil damper was developed. The most attractive feature of this damper is to reduce the damping force at the moment when the frame deformation comes close to its maximum value. Due to this feature, the reinforcement of columns, girders, and foundations are no longer required. The authors applied seismic retrofitting with a deformation-dependent oil damper to an existing 54-story office building (Shinjuku Center Building) located in Shinjuku ward, Tokyo, in 2009 to suppress vibration under the long period earthquake ground motions. The seismic responses were observed in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, and it is clarified that the damping ratio was higher and the response lower by 20% as compared to the building without dampers.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.337-348
• /
• 2020

Experimental testing has been considered as one of the most straightforward approaches to realize the structural behavior for earthquake engineering studies. Recently, novel and advanced experimental techniques, which combine numerical simulation with experimental testing, have been developed and applied to structural testing practically. However, researchers have to take the risk of damaging specimens or facilities during the process of developing and validating new experimental methods. In view of this, a small-scale structural laboratory has been designed and constructed in order to verify the effectiveness of newly developed experimental technique before it is applied to large-scale testing for safety concerns in this paper. Two orthogonal steel reaction walls and one steel T-slotted reaction floor are designed and analyzed. Accordingly, a large variety of experimental setups can be completed by installing servo-hydraulic actuators and fixtures depending on different research purposes. Meanwhile, a state-of-the-art digital controller and multiple real-time computation machines are allocated. The integration of hardware and software interfaces provides the feasibility and flexibility of developing novel experimental methods that used to be difficult to complete in conventional structural laboratories. A simple experimental demonstration is presented which utilizes part of the hardware and software in the small-scale structural laboratory. Finally, experimental layouts of future potential development and application are addressed and discussed, providing the practitioners with valuable reference for experimental earthquake engineering.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.3 no.3
• /
• pp.185-198
• /
• 2003

The concept of performance based seismic design has been gradually accepted by the earthquake engineering profession recently, in which the cost-effectiveness criterion is one of the most important principles and more attention is paid to the structural performance at the inelastic stage. Since there are many uncertainties in seismic design, reliability analysis is a major task in performance based seismic design. However, structural reliability analysis may be very costly and time consuming because the limit state function is usually a highly nonlinear implicit function with respect to the basic design variables, especially for the complex large-scale structures for dynamic and nonlinear analysis. Understanding statistical properties of the structural inelastic deformation, which is the aim of the present paper, is helpful to develop an efficient approximate approach of reliability analysis. The present paper studies the statistical properties of the maximum elastoplastic story drift of steel frames subjected to earthquake load. The randomness of earthquake load, dead load, live load, steel elastic modulus, yield strength and structural member dimensions are considered. Possible probability distributions for the maximum story are evaluated using K-S test. The results show that the choice of the probability distribution for the maximum elastoplastic story drift of steel frames is related to the mean value of the maximum elastoplastic story drift. When the mean drift is small (less than 0.3%), an extreme value type I distribution is the best choice. However, for large drifts (more than 0.35%), an extreme value type II distribution is best.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2002.03a
• /
• pp.28-35
• /
• 2002

The probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for engineering needs several active fault parameters as input data. Fault slip rates, the segmentation model for each fault, and the date of the most recent large earthquake in seismic hazard analysis are the critical pieces of information required to characterize behavior of the faults. Slip rates provide a basis for calculating earthquake recurrence intervals. Segmentation models define potential rupture lengths and are inputs to earthquake magnitude. The most recent event is used in time-dependent probability calculations. These data were assembled by expert source-characterization groups consisting of geologists, geophysicists, and seismologists evaluating the information available for earth fault. The procedures to prepare inputs for seismic hazard are illustrated with possible segmentation scenarios of capable fault models and the seismic hazards are evaluated to see the implication of considering capable faults models.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.45-49
• /
• 1996

It is shown that the concept of 'earthquake quanta' proposed by Sacks and Rydeleck (1995) may be expressed in a more general form. The property that for large earthquakes the stress drop is approximately a constant, while for small events the stress drop is proportional to the moment seems independent of the failure criteria of the earthquake quanta. The physical significance of the concept of earthquake quanta is discussed in the perspective of 'seismon'.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
• /
• 1998.10a
• /
• pp.553-558
• /
• 1998

Since the mid of the 20th century in the world, it has been observed that the number of minor or moderate earthquake motions tend to be increased year by year. Owing to the topographical condition, moreover, large numbers of skew bridges have been constructed for the requirements of more than DB18 ton bridge in Korea. It has been also observed from foreign countries that lots of superstructures collapse in bridge were occurred in previous earthquakes, inclusive of 1995 Kobe earthquake. This is caused by a relative displacement between the upper and lower structure of bridge by the earthquake and the rotation with respect to the vertical axis of skew bridges, which were subjected to and earthquake motion. In this study, the probabilistic analysis of unseating failure of skew bridges under scenario earthquake has been carried out by evaluating the longitudinal displacement of skew bridges.