• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.366-368
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• 2003

The Rann of Kachchh in Gujarat in the Western part of India is seismically the most active area outside Himalayan Belt. Several severe earthquakes of which the 1819 Rann of Kachchh and 2001 Bhuj Earthquakes are the severest recorded have rocked the region. This paper is an attempt to make a comparative study of the 1819,1844 and 2001 earthquakes. The study of 1819 and 1944 earthquakes is based on secondary accounts while 2001 Bhuj earthquake is based on remote Sensing. From a comparative study of the three earthquakes many interesting conclusions can be drawn. These earthquakes have been the result of accumulation of stress caused due to the collision of Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate, which is continuously moving northwards. The earthquakes have been felt over large part of the Indian Sub-continent. These have resulted in creation of several faults that have activated periodically. Prominent of them are the Allah Bund Fault, Manfara Fault and Budharmora Fault. These are strike slip faults that get periodically activated. In future too these faults are going to be the most vulnerable to any seismic activity with the probability of high intensity earthquakes occurring along them in future too.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.325-339
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• 2013

A number of structural and modal parameters are derived from the strong motion records of an instrumented G + 9 storeyed RC building during Bhuj earthquake, 26 Jan. 2001 in India. Some of the extracted parameters are peak floor accelerations, storey drift and modal characteristics. Modal parameters of the building are also compared with the values obtained from ambient vibration survey of the instrumented building after the occurrence of earthquake. These parameters are further used for calibrating the accuracy of fixed-base Finite Element (FE) models considering structural and non-structural elements. Some conclusions are drawn based on theoretical and experimental results obtained from strong motion records and time history analysis of FE models. An important outcome of the study is that strong motion peak acceleration profile in two horizontal directions is close to FE model in which masonry infill walls are modeled.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.381-394
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• 2003

While constructing multistorey buildings with reinforced concrete framed structures it is a common practice to provide parking space for vehicles at the ground floor level. This floor will generally consist of open frames without any infilled walls and is called an open-storey. From a post disaster damage survey carried out, it was noticed that during the January 26, 2001 Bhuj (Gujarat, India) earthquake, a large number of reinforced concrete framed buildings with open-storey at ground floor level, suffered extensive damage and in some cases catastrophic collapse. This has brought into sharp focus the need to carry out systematic studies on the seismic vulnerability of such buildings. Determination of vulnerability requires realistic structural response estimations taking into account the stochasticity in the loading and the system parameters. The stochastic finite element method can be effectively used to model the random fields while carrying out such studies. This paper presents the details of stochastic finite element analysis of a five-storey three-bay reinforced concrete framed structure with open-storey subjected to standard seismic excitation. In the present study, only the stochasticity in the system parameters is considered. The stochastic finite element method used for carrying out the analysis is based on perturbation technique. Each random field representing the stochastic geometry/material property is discretised into correlated random variables using spatial averaging technique. The uncertainties in geometry and material properties are modelled using the first two moments of the corresponding parameters. In evaluating the stochastic response, the cross-sectional area and Young' modulus are considered as independent random fields. To study the influence of correlation length of random fields, different correlation lengths are considered for random field discretisation. The spatial expectations and covariances for displacement response at any time instant are obtained as the output. The effect of open-storey is modelled by suitably considering the stiffness of infilled walls in the upper storey using cross bracing. In order to account for changes in soil conditions during strong motion earthquakes, both fixed and hinged supports are considered. The results of the stochastic finite element based seismic analysis of reinforced concrete framed structures reported in this paper demonstrate the importance of considering the effect of open-storey with appropriate support conditions to estimate the realistic response of buildings subjected to earthquakes.