• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제23권3호
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• pp.259-269
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• 2022

In this study, we introduce a canonical correlation analysis method to accurately assess the tunnel damage potential of ground motion. The proposed method can retain information relating to the initial variables. A total of 100 ground motion records are used as seismic inputs to analyze the dynamic response of three different profiles of tunnels under deep and shallow burial conditions. Nine commonly used ground motion parameters were selected to form the canonical variables of ground motion parameters (GMP_CCA). Five structural dynamic response parameters were selected to form canonical variables of structural dynamic response parameters (DRP_CCA). Canonical correlation analysis is used to maximize the correlation coefficients between GMP_CCA and DRP_CCA to obtain multivariate ground motion parameters that can be used to comprehensively assess the tunnel damage potential. The results indicate that the multivariate ground motion parameters used in this study exhibit good stability, making them suitable for evaluating the tunnel damage potential induced by ground motion. Among the nine selected ground motion parameters, peck ground acceleration (PGA), peck ground velocity (PGV), root-mean-square acceleration (RMSA), and spectral acceleration (Sa) have the highest contribution rates to GMP_CCA and DRP_CCA and the highest importance in assessing the tunnel damage potential. In contrast to univariate ground motion parameters, multivariate ground motion parameters exhibit a higher correlation with tunnel dynamic response parameters and enable accurate assessment of tunnel damage potential.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제88권2호
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• pp.117-128
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• 2023

On February 6, 2023, Türkiye woke up with a strong ground motion felt in a wide geography. As a result of the Kahramanmaraş, Pazarcık and Elbistan earthquakes, which took place 9 hours apart, there was great destruction and loss of life. The 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes occurred on active faults known to pose a high seismic hazard, but their effects were devastating. Seismic code spectra were investigated in Hatay, Adıyaman and Kahramanmaraş where destruction is high. The study mainly focuses on the investigation of ground motion parameters of 6 February Kahramanmaraş earthquakes and the correlation between ground motion parameters. In addition, earthquakes greater than Mw 5.0 that occurred in Türkiye were compared with certain seismic parameters. As in the strong ground motion studies, seismic energy parameters such as Arias intensity, characteristic intensity, cumulative absolute velocity and specific energy density were determined, especially considering the duration content of the earthquake. Based on the study, it was concluded that the structures were overloaded far beyond their normal design levels. This, coupled with significant vertical seismic components, is a contributing factor to the collapse of many buildings in the area. In the evaluation made on Arias intensity, much more energy (approximately ten times) emerged in Kahramanmaraş earthquakes compared to other Türkiye earthquakes. No good correlation was found between moment magnitude and peak ground accelerations, peak ground velocities, Arias intensities and ground motion durations in Türkiye earthquakes. Both high seismic components and long ground motion durations caused intense energy to be transferred to the structures. No strong correlation was found between ground motion durations and other seismic parameters. There is a strong positive correlation between PGA and seismic energy parameter AI. Kahramanmaraş earthquakes revealed that changes should be made in the Turkish seismic code to predict higher spectral acceleration values, especially in earthquake-prone regions in Türkiye.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제16권5호
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• pp.563-573
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• 2019

When generating spectrum-compatible artificial ground motion in engineering practices, the effect of the variation in fitting parameters on the distribution of the peak ground displacement (PGD) has not yet drawn enough attention. In this study, a method for simulating ground motion matching for multiple targets is developed. In this method, a frequency-dependent amplitude envelope function with statistical parameters is introduced to simulate the nonstationarity of the frequency in earthquake ground motion. Then, several groups of time-history acceleration with different temporal and spectral nonstationarities were generated to analyze the effect of nonstationary parameter variations on the distribution of PGD. The following conclusions are drawn from the results: (1) In the simulation of spectrum-compatible artificial ground motion, if the acceleration time-history is generated with random initial phases, the corresponding PGD distribution is quite discrete and an uncertain number of PGD values lower than the limit value are observed. Nevertheless, the mean values of PGD always meet the requirement in every group. (2) If the nonstationary frequencies of the ground motion are taken into account when fitting the target spectrum, the corresponding PGD values will increase. A correlation analysis shows that the change in the mean and the dispersion values, from before the frequencies are controlled to after, correlates with the modal parameters of the predominant frequencies. (3) Extending the maximum period of the target spectrum will increase the corresponding PGD value and, simultaneously, decrease the PGD dispersion. Finally, in order to control the PGD effectively, the ground motion simulation method suggested in this study was revised to target a specified PGD. This novel method can generate ground motion that satisfies not only the required precision of the target spectrum, peak ground acceleration (PGA), and nonstationarity characteristics of the ground motion but also meets the required limit of the PGD, improving engineering practices.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제84권1호
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• pp.85-100
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• 2022

The updated Turkish Building Earthquake Code has been significantly renovated and expanded compared to previous seismic design codes. The use of earthquake ground motion levels with different probabilities of exceedance is one of the major advances in structural mechanics with the current code. This study aims to investigate the earthquake performance of steel structure in settlements with different seismic hazards for various earthquake ground motion levels. It is focused on earthquake and structural parameters for four different ground motion levels with different probabilities of exceedance calculated according to the location of the structure by the updated Turkish Hazard Map. For this purpose, each of the seven different geographical regions of Turkey which has the same seismic zone in the previous earthquake hazard map has been considered. Earthquake parameters, horizontal design elastic spectra obtained and comparisons were made for all different ground motion levels for the seven different locations, respectively. Structural analyzes for a sample steel structure were carried out using pushover analysis by using the obtained design spectra. It has been determined that the different ground motion levels significantly affect the expected target displacements of the structure for performance criteria. It is noted that the different locations of the same earthquake zone in the previous code with the same earthquake-building parameters show significant variations due to the micro zoning properties of the updated seismic design code. In addition, the main innovations of the updated code were discussed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제10권6호
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• pp.1315-1330
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• 2016

This study investigates ground motion parameters and their damage potential for building type structures. It focuses on low and mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings that are important portion of the existing building stock under seismic risk in many countries. Correlations of 19 parameters of 466 earthquake records with nonlinear displacement demands of 1056 Single Degree of Freedom (SDOF) systems are investigated. Properties of SDOF systems are established to represent RC building construction practice. The correlation of damage and ground motion characteristics is examined with respect to number of story and site classes. Equations for average nonlinear displacement demands of considered RC buildings are given for some of the ground motion parameters. Velocity related parameters are generally found to have better results than the acceleration, displacement and frequency related ones. Correlation of the parameters may be expected to decrease with increasing intensity of seismic event. Velocity Spectrum Intensity and Peak Ground Velocity have been found to have the highest correlation values for almost all site classes and number of story groups. Common parameter of Peak Ground Acceleration has lower correlation with damage when compared to them and some other parameters like Effective Design Acceleration and Characteristic Intensity.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제10권3호
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• pp.563-588
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• 2016

In this study, solution models are proposed to obtain code-compatible ground motion record sets which can be used for both uni-directional and bi-directional dynamic analyses. Besides scaled, unscaled ground motion record sets are obtained to show the utility and efficiency of the solution models. For scaled ground motion sets the proposed model is based on hybrid HS-Solver which integrates heuristic harmony search (HS) algorithm with the spreadsheet Solver add-in. For unscaled ground motion sets HS based solution model is proposed. Design spectra defined in Eurocode-8 for different soil types are selected as target spectra. The European Strong Motion Database is used to get ground motion record sets. Also, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to evaluate the effect of different HS solution parameters on the solution accuracy. Results show that the proposed solution models can be regarded as efficient ways to develop scaled and unscaled ground motion sets compatible with code-based design spectra.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제19권2호
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• pp.79-90
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• 2020

4- and 8-storey reinforced-concrete frame buildings are analyzed under the suites of the near-fault pulse-like, and the corresponding spectrally equivalent far-fault ground-motion records. Seismic fragility curves for the slight, moderate, extensive, and complete damage states are developed, and the damage probability matrices, and the mean loss ratios corresponding to the Design Basis Earthquake and the Maximum Considered Earthquake hazard levels are compared, for the investigated buildings and sets of ground-motion records. It is observed that the spectrally equivalent far-fault ground-motion records result in comparable estimates of the fragility curve parameters, as that of the near-fault pulse-like ground-motion records. As a result, the derived damage probability matrices and mean loss ratios using two suites of ground-motion records differ only marginally (of the order of ~10%) for the investigated levels of seismic hazard, thus, implying the potential for application of the spectrally equivalent ground-motion records, for seismic fragility and risk assessment at the near-fault sites.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제22권3호
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• pp.293-310
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• 2006

In seismic prone areas it is possible to meet very different objects (equipment components, on shelf artefacts, simple architectural elements) that can be modelled as a rigid body rocking on a rigid foundation. The interest in their behaviour can have different reasons: seismological, in order to estimate the ground motion intensity, or more strictly mechanical, in order to limit the response severity and to avoid overturning. The behaviour of many rigid bodies subjected to twenty wide ranging acceleration recordings is studied here. The response of the blocks is described using kinematic and energy parameters. A condition under which a so called scale effect is tangible is highlighted. The capacity of the signals to produce overturning is compared to different ground motion parameters, and a good correlation with the Peak Ground Velocity is unveiled.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.445-459
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• 2016

Quantitative estimation of seismic response of various structural systems at the collapse limit state is one of the most significant objectives in Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE). Assessing the effects of uncertainties, due to variability in ground motion characteristics and random nature of earthquakes, on nonlinear structural response is a pivotal issue regarding collapse safety prediction. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) and fragility curves are utilized to estimate demand parameters and seismic performance levels of structures. Since producing these curves based on a large number of nonlinear dynamic analyses would be time-consuming, selection of appropriate earthquake ground motion records resulting in reliable responses with sufficient accuracy seems to be quite essential. The aim of this research study is to propose a methodology to assess the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete frames at collapse limit state via accurate estimation of seismic fragility curves for different Engineering Demand Parameters (EDPs) by using a limited number of ground motion records. Research results demonstrate that accurate estimating of structural collapse capacity is feasible through applying the proposed method offering an appropriate suite of limited ground motion records.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제34권4호
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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.