• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.453-462
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• 2018

Damages to buildings affected by a near-fault strong ground motion are largely attributed to the vertical component of the earthquake resulting in column failures, which could lead to disproportionate building catastrophic collapse in a progressive fashion. Recently, considerable interests are awakening to study effects of earthquake vertical components on structural responses. In this study, detailed modeling and time-history analyses of a 12-story code-conforming reinforced concrete moment frame building carrying the gravity loads, and exposed to once only the horizontal component of, and second time simultaneously the horizontal and vertical components of an ensemble of far-field and near-field earthquakes are conducted. Structural responses inclusive of tension, compression and its fluctuations in columns, the ratio of shear demand to capacity in columns and peak mid-span moment demand in beams are compared with and without the presence of the vertical component of earthquake records. The influences of the existence of earthquake vertical component in both exterior and interior spans are separately studied. Thereafter, the correlation between the increase of demands induced by the vertical component of the earthquake and the ratio of a set of earthquake record characteristic parameters is investigated. It is shown that uplift initiation and the magnitude of tensile forces developed in corner columns are relatively more critical. Presence of vertical component of earthquake leads to a drop in minimum compressive force and initiation of tension in columns. The magnitude of this reduction in the most critical case is recorded on average 84% under near-fault ground motions. Besides, the presence of earthquake vertical components increases the shear capacity required in columns, which is at most 31%. In the best case, a direct correlation of 95% between the increase of the maximum compressive force and the ratio of vertical to horizontal 'effective peak acceleration (EPA)' is observed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.621-642
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• 2011

Passive tuned mass dampers (TMDs) efficiently suppress vibrations induced by quasi-stationary dynamic inputs, such as winds, sea waves or traffic loads, but may prove of little use against pulse-like excitations, such as near-field (NF) ground motions. The extent of such impairment is however controversial, partly due to the different evaluation criteria adopted within the literature, partly to the limited number of seismic records used in most investigations. In this study, three classical techniques and two new variants for designing a TMD on an SDOF structure are tested under 338 NF records from the PEER NGA database, including 156 records with forward-directivity features. Percentile response reduction spectra are introduced to statistically assess TMD performance, and TMD robustness is verified through Monte Carlo simulations. The methodology is extended to a variety of MDOF bending-type and shear-type frames, and simulated on a case study building structure recently constructed in Central Italy.Results offer an interesting insight into the performance of TMDs against NF earthquakes, ultimately showing that, if properly designed and sufficiently massive, TMDs are effective and robust even in the face of pulse-like ground motions. The two newly proposed design techniques are shown to generally outperform the classical ones.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.119-131
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• 2024

Pulse-like ground motion can cause greater damage to structures than nonpulse-like ground motion. Currently, much research is being conducted to determine the presence or absence of velocity pulses and to quantify them from seismic-acceleration records. Existing ground motion is divided into far-field (FF) and near-fault ground motion, based on the distance of the measurement point from the fault. Near-fault ground motion is further classified into near-fault pulse-like (NFP) and near-fault nonpulse-like (NFNP) ground motion by quantifying the presence or absence of velocity pulses. For each ground motion group, 40 FF, 40 NFP, and 40 NFNP ground motions are selected; thus, 120 ground motions are used in the seismic analysis to assess the seismic fragility of sample bridges. Probabilistic seismic demand models (PSDMs) are created by evaluating the seismic responses of two types of sample bridges with lead-rubber and elastomeric rubber bearings using three groups of ground motions. Seismic fragility analysis is performed using the PSDM, and from these results, the effect of the presence or absence of seismic velocity pulses on the seismic fragility is evaluated. From the comparison results of the seismic fragility curve, the seismic fragility of NFP ground motion appears to be approximately three to five times greater than that of NFNP ground motion, according to the presence or absence of a velocity pulse of seismic waves. This means that the damage to the bridge is greater in the case of NFP ground motion than that in the case of NFNP ground motion.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.557-585
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• 2013

The recent huge earthquake ground motion records in Japan result in the reconsideration of seismic design forces for nuclear power stations from the view point of seismological research. In addition, the seismic design force should be defined also from the view point of structural engineering. In this paper it is shown that one of the occurrence mechanisms of such large acceleration in recent seismic records (recorded in or near massive structures and not free-field ground motions) is due to the interaction between a massive building and its surrounding soil which induces amplification of local mode in the surface soil. Furthermore on-site investigation after earthquakes in the nuclear power stations reveals some damages of soil around the building (cracks, settlement and sand boiling). The influence of plastic behavior of soil is investigated in the context of interaction between the structure and the surrounding soil. Moreover the amplification property of the surface soil is investigated from the seismic records of the Suruga-gulf earthquake in 2009 and the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake in 2011. Two methods are introduced for the analysis of the non-stationary process of ground motions. It is shown that the non-stationary Fourier spectra can detect the temporal change of frequency contents of ground motions and the displacement profile integrated from its acceleration profile is useful to evaluate the seismic behavior of the building and the surrounding soil.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.803-820
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• 2016

In this study a direct displacement-based design (DDBD) procedure for a continuous deck bridge isolated with triple friction pendulum bearings (TFPB) has been proposed and the seismic demands of the bridge such as isolator's displacement and drift of piers obtained from this procedure evaluated under two-directional near-field ground motions. The structural model used here are continuous, three-span, castin-place concrete box girder bridge with a 30-degree skew which are isolated with 9 different TFPBs. By comparing the results of DDBD method with those of nonlinear time history analysis (NTHA), it can be concluded that the proposed procedure is able to predict seismic demands of similar isolated bridges with acceptable accuracy. Results of NTHA shows that dispersion of peak resultant responses for a group of ground motions increases by increasing their average value of responses. It needs to be noted that the demands parameters calculated by the DDBD procedure are almost overestimated for stiffer soil condition, but there is some underestimation in results of this method for softer soil condition.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2013

This article presents the statistical characteristics of elastic floor acceleration spectra that represent the peak response demand of non-structural components attached to a nonlinear supporting frame. For this purpose, a set of stiff and flexible general moment resisting frames with periods of 0.3-3.6 sec. are analyzed using forty-nine near-field strong ground motion records. Peak accelerations are derived for each single degree of freedom non-structural component, supported by the above mentioned frames, through a direct-integration time-history analysis. These accelerations are obtained by Floor Acceleration Response Spectrum (FARS) method. They are statistically analyzed in the next step to achieve a better understanding of their height-wise distributions. The factors that affect FARS values are found in the relevant state of the art. Here, they are summarized to evaluate the amplification and/or reduction of FARS values especially when the supporting structures undergo inelastic behavior. The properties of FARS values are studied in three regions: long-period, fundamental-period and short-period. Maximum elastic acceleration response of non-structural component, mounted on inelastic frames, depends on the following factors: inelasticity intensity and modal periods of supporting structure; natural period, damping ratio and location of non-structural component. The FARS values, corresponded to the modal periods of supporting structure, are strongly reduced beyond elastic domain. However, they could be amplified in the transferring period domain between the mentioned modal periods. In the next step, the amplification and/or reduction of FARS values, caused by inelastic behavior of supporting structure, are calculated. A parameter called the response acceleration reduction factor ($R_{acc}$), has been previously used for far-field earthquakes. The feasibility of extending this parameter for near-field motions is focused here, suggested repeatedly in the relevant sources. The nonlinearity of supporting structure is included in ($R_{acc}$) for better estimation of maximum non-structural component absolute acceleration demand, which is ordinarily neglected in the seismic design provisions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.1327-1328
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• 2004

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.53-65
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• 2019

Misaligned wind-wave and seismic loading render offshore wind turbines suffering from excessive bi-directional vibration. However, most of existing research in this field focused on unidirectional vibration mitigation, which is insufficient for research and real application. Based on the authors' previous work (Sun and Jahangiri 2018), the present study uses a three dimensional pendulum tuned mass damper (3d-PTMD) to mitigate the nacelle structural response in the fore-aft and side-side directions under wind, wave and near-fault ground motions. An analytical model of the offshore wind turbine coupled with the 3d-PTMD is established wherein the interaction between the blades and the tower is modelled. Aerodynamic loading is computed using the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) method where the Prandtl's tip loss factor and the Glauert correction are considered. Wave loading is computed using Morison equation in collaboration with the strip theory. Performance of the 3d-PTMD is examined on a National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) monopile 5 MW baseline wind turbine under misaligned wind-wave and near-fault ground motions. The robustness of the mitigation performance of the 3d-PTMD under system variations is studied. Dual linear TMDs are used for comparison. Research results show that the 3d-PTMD responds more rapidly and provides better mitigation of the bi-directional response caused by misaligned wind, wave and near-fault ground motions. Under system variations, the 3d-PTMD is found to be more robust than the dual linear TMDs to overcome the detuning effect. Moreover, the 3d-PTMD with a mass ratio of 2% can mitigate the short-term fatigue damage of the offshore wind turbine tower by up to 90%.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.6
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• pp.751-763
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• 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
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• v.70 no.3
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• pp.289-301
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• 2019

Hysteretic energy is defined as energy dissipated through inelastic deformations during a ground motion by the system. It includes frequency content and duration of ground motion as two remarkable parameters, while these characteristics are not seen in displacement spectrum. Since maximum displacement individually cannot be the appropriate criterion for damage assessment, hysteretic energy has been evaluated in this research as a more comprehensive seismic demand parameter. An innovative methodology has been proposed to establish a new equivalent linear model to estimate hysteretic energy spectrum for bilinear SDOF models under two different sets of earthquake excitations. Error minimization has been defined in the space of equivalent linearization concept, which resulted in equivalent damping and equivalent period as representative parameters of the linear model. Nonlinear regression analysis was carried out for predicting these equivalent parameter as a function of ductility. The results also indicate differences between seismic demand characteristics of far-field and near-field ground motions, which are not identified by most of previous equations presented for predicting seismic energy. The main advantage of the proposed model is its independency on parameters related to earthquake and response characteristics, which has led to more efficiency as well as simplicity. The capability of providing a practical energy based seismic performance evaluation is another outstanding feature of the proposed model.