• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.341-380
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• 2023

This study evaluates the seismic fragilities in fill slopes in South Korea through parametric finite element analyses that have been barely investigated thus far. We consider three slope geometries for a slope of height 10 m and three slope angles, and two soil types, namely frictional and frictionless, associated with two soil states, loose and dense for frictional soils and soft and stiff for frictionless soils. The input ground motions accounting for four site conditions in South Korea are obtained from one-dimensional site response analyses. By comparing the numerical modeling of slopes using PLAXIS^2D against the previous studies, we compiled suites of the maximum permanent slope displacement (D_max) against two ground motion parameters, namely, peak ground acceleration (PGA) and Arias Intensity (I_A). A probabilistic seismic demand model is adopted to compute the probabilities of exceeding three limit states (minor, moderate, and extensive). We propose multiple seismic fragility curves as functions of a single ground motion parameter and numerous seismic fragility surfaces as functions of two ground motion parameters. The results show that soil type, slope angle, and input ground motion influence these probabilities, and are expected to help regional authorities and engineers assess the seismic fragility of fill slopes in the road systems in South Korea.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.141-153
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• 2023

The presented paper considers infill masonry walls' influence on the seismic reliability of precast concrete frames. The recent Bojnord earthquake on May 13th, 2017 in Iran (MW 5.4) illustrated that the infill masonry walls play a crucial role in the damage extent and life safety issues of inhabitants in the precast concrete buildings. The incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) approach was used to determine the fragility curves of the represented damaged precast frame. Then, by integrating site hazard and structural fragilities, the seismic reliability of the represented precast frame was evaluated in different damage limit states. Additionally, the static pushover analysis (SPA) approach was used to assess the seismic performance assessment of the precast frame. Bare and infilled frames were modeled as 2D frames employing the OpenSees software platform. The multi-strut macro-model method was employed for infill masonry simulation. Also, a relatively efficient and straightforward nonlinear model was used to simulate the nonlinear behavior of the precast beam-column joint. The outputs show that consideration of the masonry infilled wall effect in all spans of the structural frame leads to a decrease in the possibility of exceedance of specified damage limit states in the structures. In addition, variation of hazard curves for buildings with and without consideration of infilled walls leads to a decrease in the reliability of the building's frames with masonry infilled walls. Furthermore, the lack of infill walls in the first story significantly affects the precast concrete frame's seismic reliability and performance.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.413-419
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• 2016

Damage of infrastructures by an earthquake causes the secondary damage through the world at large more than the damage of the structures themselves. Amomg them, underground utility tunnel structures comes under the special life line: communication, gas, electricity and etc. and it has a need to evaluate its fragility to an earthquake exactly. Therefore, the destruction ability according to peak ground acceleration of earthquakes for the underground utility tunnels is evaluated in this paper. As an input ground motion for evaluating seismic fragilities, real earthquakes and artificial seismic waves which could be generated in the Korean peninsula are used. And as a seismic analysis method, response displacement method and time history analyzing method are used. An limit state which determines whether destruction is based on the bending moment and shear deformation. A method used to deduct seismic fragility curve is method of maximum likelihood and the distribution function is assumed to the log normal distribution. It could evaluate the damage of underground utility tunnels to an earthquake and could be applied as basic data for seismic design of underground utility tunnel structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.147-162
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• 2020

This paper presents a novel precast energy dissipation shear wall (PEDSW) structure system that using mild steel dampers as dry connectors at the vertical joints to connect adjacent wall panels. Analytical studies are systematically conducted to investigate the seismic performance of the proposed PEDSW under sequence-type ground motions. During earthquake events, earthquake sequences have the potential to cause severe damage to structures and threaten life safety. To date, the damage probability of engineering structures under earthquake sequence has not been included in structural design codes. In this study, numerical simulations on single-story PEDSW are carried out to validate the feasibility and reliability of using mild steel dampers to connect the precast shear walls. The seismic responses of the PEDSW and cast-in-place shear wall (CIPSW) are comparatively studied based on nonlinear time-history analyses, and the effectiveness of the proposed high-rise PEDSW is demonstrated. Next, the foreshock-mainshock-aftershock type earthquake sequences are constructed, and the seismic response and fragility curves of the PEDSW under single mainshock and earthquake sequences are analyzed and compared. Finally, the fragility analysis of PEDSW structure under earthquake sequences is performed. The influences of scaling factor of the aftershocks (foreshocks) to the mainshocks on the fragility of the PEDSW structure under different damage states are investigated. The numerical results reveal that neglecting the effect of earthquake sequence can lead to underestimated seismic responses and fragilities, which may result in unsafe design schemes of PEDSW structures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.7_spc
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• pp.435-441
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• 2016

The Korean peninsula has known as a minor-to-moderate seismic region. However, some recent studies had shown that the maximum possible earthquake magnitude in the region is approximately 6.3-6.5. Therefore, a seismic vulnerability assessment of the existing infrastructures considering ground motions in Korea is necessary. In this study, we developed seismic fragility curves for a continuous steel box girder bridge and two typical transmission towers, in which a set of seven artificial and natural ground motions recorded in South Korea is used. A finite element simulation framework, OpenSees, is utilized to perform nonlinear time history analyses of the bridge and a commercial software, SAP2000, is used to perform time history analyses of the transmission towers. The fragility curves based on Korean ground motions were then compared with the fragility curves generated using worldwide ground motions to evaluate the effect of the two ground motion groups on the seismic fragility curves of the structures. The results show that both non-isolated and base-isolated bridges are less vulnerable to the Korean ground motions than to worldwide earthquakes. Similarly to the bridge case, the transmission towers are safer during Korean motions than that under worldwide earthquakes in terms of fragility functions.

• 한국방재학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.02a
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• pp.269-272
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• 2008

The seismic fragility curves of a structure represents the probability of exceeding the prescribed structural damage given various levels of ground motion intensityand the seismic fragility curve is essential to evaluation of structural performance and assessment of risk and loss of structures. The purpose of this paper is to develop seismic fragility functions for bridge structures in Koreaby reviewing those of advanced countries. Therefore, at first, we investigated development conditions of the seismic fragility functions. And the next highway bridges in Korea are classified into a number of categories and several typical bridges are selected to estimate seismic fragilities for using this analysis method in Korea. Finally, fragility curves for PSC Box girder bridge are estimated. The results show that the bridge classification and damage state play an important role in estimation of seismic damage and seismic fragility analysis for bridge structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.187-197
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• 2020

Ground motion records are commonly used for fragility curves (FCs) developing utilized in seismic loss estimating analysis for earthquake prone zones. These records could be 'real', say the recorded acceleration time series or 'simulated' records consistent with the regional seismicity and produced by use of alternative simulation methods. This study has focused on fragility curves developing for masonry buildings through computational 'simulated' ground motion records while evaluating the properness of these fragilities compared to the curves generated by the use of 'real' records. Assessing the dynamic responses of structures, nonlinear computational time history analyses through the equivalent single degree of freedom systems have been implemented on OpenSees platform. Accordingly, computational structural analyses of multi-story 3D frame structures with different stiffening members considering soil interaction have been carried out with finite element software according to (1992) Earthquake East-West component. The obtained results have been compared to each frame regarding soil interaction. Conclusion and recommendations with the discuss of obtaining findings are presented.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.6
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• pp.747-760
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• 2018

In the present study, a methodology for developing fragilities of arch concrete dams to assess their performance against seismic hazards is introduced. Firstly, the probability risk and fragility curves are presented, followed by implementation and representation of the way this method is used. Amirkabir arch concrete dam was subjected to non-linear dynamic analyses. A modified three dimensional rotating smeared crack model was used to take the nonlinear behavior of mass concrete into account. The proposed model considers major characteristics of mass concrete. These characteristics are pre-softening behavior, softening initiation criteria, fracture energy conservation, suitable damping mechanism and strain rate effect. In the present analysis, complete fluid-structure interaction is included to account for appropriate fluid compressibility and absorptive reservoir boundary conditions. In this study, the Amirkabir arch concrete dam is subjected to a set of 8 three-component earthquakes each scaled to 10 increasing intensity levels. Using proposed nonlinear smeared crack model, nonlinear analysis is performed where the structure is subjected to a large set of scaled and un-scaled ground motions and the maximum responses are extracted for each one and plotted. Based on the results, fragility curves were plotted according to various and possible damages indexes. Discrete damage probabilities were calculated using statistical methods for each considered performance level and incremental nonlinear analysis. Then, fragility curves were constructed based on the lognormal distribution assumption. Two damage indexes were introduced and compared to one another. The results indicate that the dam has a proper stability under earthquake conditions at MCE level. Moreover, displacement damages index is more conservative and impractical in the fragility analysis than tensional damage index.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.77 no.2
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• pp.197-215
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• 2021

Under a severe environment of multiple hazards such as earthquakes and winds, the life-cycle performance of engineering structures may inevitably be deteriorated due to the fatigue effect caused by long-term exposure to wind loads, which would further increase the structural vulnerability to earthquakes. This paper presents a framework for evaluating the lifetime structural seismic performance under the effect of wind-induced fatigue considering different sources of uncertainties. The seismic behavior of a high-rise steel-concrete composite frame with buckling-restrained braces (FBRB) during its service life is systematically investigated using the proposed approach. Recorded field data for the wind hazard of Fuzhou, Fujian Province of China from Jan. 1, 1980 to Mar. 31, 2019 is collected, based on which the distribution of wind velocity is constructed by the Gumbel model after comparisons. The OpenSees platform is employed to establish the numerical model of the FBRB and conduct subsequent numerical computations. Allowed for the uncertainties caused by the wind generation and structural modeling, the final annual fatigue damage takes the average of 50 groups of simulations. The lifetime structural performance assessments, including static pushover analyses, nonlinear dynamic time history analyses and fragility analyses, are conducted on the time-dependent finite element (FE) models which are modified in lines with the material deterioration models. The results indicate that the structural performance tends to degrade over time under the effect of fatigue, while the influencing degree of fatigue varies with the duration time of fatigue process and seismic intensity. The impact of wind-induced fatigue on structural responses and fragilities are explicitly quantified and discussed in details.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.483-495
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• 2020

Dams are vital infrastructures that are expected to maintain their stability during seismic excitations. Accordingly, cemented material dams are an emerging type, which are being increasingly used around the world owing to benefiting from advantages of both earth-fill and concrete gravity dams, which should be designed safely when subjected to strong ground motion. In the present paper, the seismic performance of a cemented sand and gravel (CSG) dam is assessed using incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) method by accounting for two failure modes of tension cracking and base joint sliding considering the dam-reservoir-foundation interactions. To take the seismic uncertainties into account, the dam is analyzed under a suite of ground motion records and then, the effect of friction angle for base sliding as well as deformability of the foundation are investigated on the response of dam. To carry out the analyses, the Cindere dam in Turkey is selected as a case study, and various limit states corresponding to seismic performance levels of the dam are determined aiming to estimate the seismic fragilities. Based on the results, sliding of the Cindere dam could be serious under the maximum credible earthquake (MCE). Besides, dam faces are mostly to be cracked under such level of intensity. Moreover, the results indicate that as friction angle increases, probability of sliding between dam and foundation is reduced whereas, increases tensile cracking. Lastly, it is observed that foundation stiffening increases the probability of dam sliding but, reduces the tensile damage in the dam body.