• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.309-317
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• 2021

In this paper, we present the evaluation results for the conservatism of the response acceleration method (RAM), for seismic response analysis of box-type power cable tunnels. We studied 50 examples, considering the cross sections of 25 power cable tunnels, and two soil conditions for each power cable tunnel. A refined dynamic analysis method considering the soil-structure interaction was further employed to evaluate the conservatism of the RAM. The comparison revelated that the seismic responses computed using the RAM were consistent with those obtained using the refined method, since the averages of response ratio (defined as the ratio of the response by RAM to that of the refined method) approached 1.0, and the standard deviations of the response ratio were less than 5%. Finally, we found that applying a load factor of 1.1 to the response of the RAM allowed for a conservative design for seismic loads.