• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.29 no.3
• /
• pp.485-498
• /
• 2022

In near-fault earthquake prone areas, the velocity pulse-like seismic waves often results in excessive horizontal displacement for structures, which may result in severe structural failure during large or near-fault earthquakes. The recently developed isolator-gap damper (IGD) systems provide a solution for the large horizontal displacement of long period base-isolated structures. However, the hysteresis characteristics of the IGD system are significantly different from the traditional hysteretic behavior. At present, the hysteretic behavior is difficult to be reflected in the structural analysis and performance evaluation especially under random earthquake excitations for lacking of effective analysis models which prevent the application of this kind of IGD system. In this paper, we propose a mathematical hysteretic model for the IGD system that presents its nonlinear hysteretic characteristics. The equivalent linearization is conducted on this nonlinear model, which requires the variances of the IGD responses. The covariance matrix for the responses of the structure and the IGD system is obtained for random earthquake excitations represented by the Kanai-Tajimi spectrum by solving the Lyapunov equation. The responses obtained by the equivalent linearization are verified in comparison with the nonlinear responses by the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) analysis for random earthquake excitations.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.15-39
• /
• 2013

The sensitivities of a structural response due to variation of its design parameters are prerequisite in the majority of the algorithms used for fundamental problems in engineering as system uncertainties, identification and probabilistic assessments etc. The paper presents the concept of probabilistic sensitivity of suspension bridges with respect to near-fault ground motion. In near field earthquake ground motions, large amplitude spectral accelerations can occur at long periods where many suspension bridges have significant structural response modes. Two different types of suspension bridges, which are Bosporus and Humber bridges, are selected to investigate the near-fault ground motion effects on suspension bridges random response sensitivity analysis. The modulus of elasticity is selected as random design variable. Strong ground motion records of Kocaeli, Northridge and Erzincan earthquakes are selected for the analyses. The stochastic sensitivity displacements and internal forces are determined by using the stochastic sensitivity finite element method and Monte Carlo simulation method. The stochastic sensitivity displacements and responses obtained from the two different suspension bridges subjected to these near-fault strong-ground motions are compared with each other. It is seen from the results that near-fault ground motions have different impacts stochastic sensitivity responses of suspension bridges. The stochastic sensitivity information provides a deeper insight into the structural design and it can be used as a basis for decision-making.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.76 no.6
• /
• pp.751-763
• /
• 2020

Available records of recent earthquakes show that near-field earthquakes have different characteristics than far-field earthquakes. In general, most of these unique characteristics of near-fault records can be attributed to their forward directivity. This phenomenon causes the records of ground motion normal to the fault to entail pulses with long periods in the velocity time history. The energy of the earthquake is almost accumulated in these pulses causing large displacements and, accordingly, severe damages in the building. Damage to structures caused by past earthquakes raises the need to assess the chance of future earthquake damage. There are a variety of methods to evaluate building seismic vulnerabilities with different computational cost and accuracy. In the meantime, fragility curves, which defines the possibility of structural damage as a function of ground motion characteristics and design parameters, are more common. These curves express the percentage of probability that the structural response will exceed the allowable performance limit at different seismic intensities. This study aims to obtain the fragility curve for low- and mid-rise structures of reinforced concrete moment frames by incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). These frames were exposed to an ensemble of 18 ground motions (nine records near-faults and nine records far-faults). Finally, after the analysis, their fragility curves are obtained using the limit states provided by HAZUS-MH 2.1. The result shows the near-fault earthquakes can drastically influence the fragility curves of the 6-story building while it has a minimal impact on those of the 3-story building.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.23 no.6
• /
• pp.615-634
• /
• 2006

Seismic response of the liquid storage tanks isolated by the elastomeric bearings and sliding systems is investigated under near-fault earthquake motions. The fault normal and parallel components of near-fault motion are applied in two horizontal directions of the tank. The continuous liquid mass of the tank is modeled as lumped masses known as sloshing mass, impulsive mass and rigid mass. The corresponding stiffness associated with these lumped masses has been worked out depending upon the properties of the tank wall and liquid mass. It is observed that the resultant response of the isolated tank is mainly governed by fault normal component with minor contribution from the fault parallel component. Further, a parametric study is also carried out to study the effects of important system parameters on the effectiveness of seismic isolation for liquid storage tanks. The various important parameters considered are: aspect ratio of tank, the period of isolation and the damping of isolation bearings. There exists an optimum value of isolation damping for which the base shear in the tank attains the minimum value under near-fault motion. The increase of damping beyond the optimum value will reduce the bearing and sloshing displacements but increases the base shear. A comparative performance of five isolation systems for liquid storage tanks is also studied under normal component of near-fault motion and found that the EDF type isolation system may be a better choice for design of isolated tank in near-fault locations. Finally, it is also observed that the satisfactory response can be obtained by analysing the base-isolated tanks under simple cycloidal pulse instead of complete acceleration history.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.243-251
• /
• 2018

The dynamic responses of a rocking wall-moment frame (RWMF) with a post-tensioned cable are investigated. The nonlinear equations of motions are developed, which can be categorized as a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) model. The model is validated through comparison of the rocking response of the rigid rocking wall (RRW) and displacement of the moment frame (MF) against that obtained from Finite Element analysis when subjected ground motion excitation. A comprehensive parametric analysis is carried out to determine the seismic performance factors of the RWMF systems under near-fault trigonometric pulse excitation. The horizontal displacement of the RWMF system is compared with that of MF structures without RRW, revealing the damping effect of the RRW. Frame displacement spectra excited by trigonometric pulses and recorded earthquake ground motions are constructed. The effects of pulse type, mass ratio, frame stiffness, and wall slenderness variations on the displacement spectra are presented. The paper shows that the coupling with a RRW has mixed results on suppressing the maximum displacement response of the frame.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.389-402
• /
• 2019

Reinforced concrete walls and buckling restrained braces are effective structural elements that are used to resist seismic loads. In this paper, the behavior of the reinforced concrete walls coupled with buckling restrained braces is investigated. In such a system, there is not any conventional reinforced concrete coupling beam. The coupling action is provided only by buckling restrained braces that dissipate energy and also cause coupling forces in the wall piers. The studied structures are 10-, 20- and 30-story ones designed according to the ASCE, ACI-318 and AISC codes. Wall nonlinear model is then prepared using the fiber elements in PERFORM-3D software. The responses of the systems subjected to the forward directivity near-fault (NF) and ordinary far-fault (FF) ground motions at maximum considered earthquake (MCE) level are studied. The seismic responses of the structures corresponding to the inter-story drift demand, curvature ductility of wall piers, and coupling ratio of the walls are compared. On average, the results show that the inter-story drift ratio for the examined systems subjected to the far-fault events at MCE level is less than allowable value of 3%. Besides, incremental dynamic analysis is used to examine the considered systems. Results of studied systems show that, the taller the structures, the higher the probability of their collapse. Also, for a certain peak ground acceleration of 1 g, the probability of collapse under NF records is more than twice this probability under FF records.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.373-387
• /
• 2018

Semi-active isolation systems based on leverage-type stiffness control strategies have been widely studied. The main concept behind this type of system is to adjust the stiffness in the isolator to match the fundamental period of the isolated system by using a simple leverage mechanism. Although this system achieves high performance under far-field earthquakes, it is unsuitable for near-fault strong ground motion. To overcome this problem, this study considers the potential energy effect in the control law of the semi-active isolation system. The minimal energy weighting (MEW) between the potential energy and kinetic energy was first optimized through a series of numerical simulations. Two MEW algorithms, namely generic and near-fault MEW control, were then developed to efficiently reduce the structural displacement responses. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, a two-degree-of-freedom structure was employed as a benchmark. Numerical results indicate that the dynamic response of the structure can be effectively dampened by the proposed MEW control under both far-field and near-fault earthquakes, whereas the structural responses resulting from conventional control methods may be greater than those for the purely passive control method. Moreover, according to experimental verifications, both the generic and near-fault MEW control modes yielded promising results under impulse-like earthquakes. The practicability of the proposed control algorithm was verified.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.211-220
• /
• 2017

Observations from past strong earthquakes revealed that near-fault ground motions could lead to the failure, or even collapse of electricity transmission towers which are vital components of an overhead electric power delivery system. For assessing the performance and robustness, a high-fidelity three-dimension finite element model of a long span transmission tower-line system is established with the consideration of geometric nonlinearity and material nonlinearity. In the numerical model, the Tian-Ma-Qu material model is utilized to capture the nonlinear behaviours of structural members, and the cumulative damage D is defined as an index to identify the failure of members. Consequently, incremental dynamic analyses (IDAs) are conducted to study the collapse fragility, damage positions, collapse margin ratio (CMR) and dynamic robustness of the transmission towers by using twenty near-fault ground motions selected from PEER. Based on the bending and shear deformation of structures, the collapse mechanism of electricity transmission towers subjected to Chi-Chi earthquake is investigated. This research can serve as a reference for the performance of large span transmission tower line system subjected to near-fault ground motions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.41 no.10
• /
• pp.1223-1234
• /
• 2009

The outlines of seismic PSA implementation standards and seismic hazard evaluation procedure were shown. An overview of the cause investigation of seismic motion amplification on the Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki (NCO) earthquake was also shown. Then, the contents for improving the seismic hazard evaluation methodology based on the lessons learned from the NCO earthquake were described. (1) It is very important to recognize the effectiveness of a fault model on the detail seismic hazard evaluation for the near seismic source through the cause investigation of the NCO earthquake. (2) In order to perform and proceed with a seismic hazard evaluation, the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization has proposed the framework of the open deliberation rule regarding the treatment of uncertainty which was made so as to be able to utilize a logic tree. (3) The b-value evaluation on the "Stress concentrating zone," which is a high seismic activity around the NCO hypocenter area, should be modified based on the Gutenberg-Richter equation.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2003.09a
• /
• pp.36-45
• /
• 2003

Sensitivity analyses for several seismic source models were studied. For the area sources, the hazard is steeply decreasing with the source-to-site distance. Hazard is decreasing when the area of the source is increasing with fixed annual rate. For the fault sources, the fault length, distance from a site and dip angle of near fault show very sensitive effect to seismic hazard. But the various magnitude-rupture length relationships show effect to seismic hazard slightly. For the fault source with small magnitude, the exponential model is preferred rather than the characteristic model to the magnitude-recurrence law.