• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.1391-1404
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• 2016

Peninsular Malaysia lying on the stable Sunda Plate has traditionally been considered safe with low to moderate seismicity. However, far field Sumatran mega-earthquakes have been shown to be capable of triggering ground motions felt in high rise structures in the major Malaysian cities while seismic impact from local earthquakes of moment magnitude 3.8 have reportedly induced nominal structural damages to nearby buildings. This paper presents an overview of the recent seismic activities in and around Peninsular Malaysia with reference to prominent earthquakes generated by far field interplate and local intraplate sources. Records of ground motion data and seismic hazard assessment (SHA) results available in the literature have been analyzed and discussed. The peak ground acceleration (PGA) values from historical records for few local intraplate events were observed to be higher than those for the events from Sumatran Subduction Zone. This clearly points to the need for a detailed and comprehensive SHA incorporating both far field and local sources. Such an analysis would contribute the knowledge required for secure and reliable infrastructure design and safeguard the Malaysian people and economy.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.219-226
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• 2010

Current earthquake alert notification for immediate post-earthquake procedures for the critical facilities is exclusively dependent on the ground-motion intensity measures observed at the seismic station located within the site. This practice is prune to false notification due to a noise and problems of missing and poor quality records of the seismic station. The credibility of the earthquake alert notification can be enhanced by utilizing the multiple transformed records of the nearby seismic stations at other sites interconnected to the same earthquake monitoring system by a network. The time-domain transformation of the site-response between the seismic stations is implemented by convoluting the nearby records with a pair of forward and inverse FIR filters designed for the site response relative to a seismic basement. The transformed records from the nearby seismic stations can be used to estimate the ground-motion intensity measures missing at the site or to evaluate the data quality along with other various possible applications in the area of geoscience and earthquake engineering.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.957-976
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• 2015

Recently, two energy-based response parameters, i.e., the absolute and the relative elastic input energy equivalent velocity, have been receiving a lot of research attention. Several studies, in fact, have demonstrated the potential of these intensity measures in the prediction of the seismic structural response. Although some ground motion prediction equations have been developed for these parameters, they only provide marginal distributions without information about the joint occurrence of the spectral values at different periods. In order to build new prediction models for the two equivalent velocities, a large set of ground motion records is used to calculate the correlation coefficients between the response spectral values corresponding to different periods and components of the ground motion. Then, functional forms adopted in models from the literature are calibrated to fit the obtained data. A new functional form is proposed to improve the predictions of the considered models from the literature. The components of the ground motion considered in this study are the two horizontal ones only. Potential uses of the proposed equations in addition to the prediction of the correlation coefficients of the equivalent velocity spectral values are shown, such as the prediction of derived intensity measures and the development of conditional mean spectra.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.221-230
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• 2017

One of the important phases of probabilistic performance-based methodology is establishing appropriate probabilistic seismic demand models (PSDMs). These demand models relate ground motion intensity measures (IMs) to demand measures (DMs). The objective of this paper is selection of the optimal IMs in probabilistic seismic demand analysis (PSDA) of the RC high-rise buildings. In selection process features such as: efficiency, practically, proficiency and sufficiency are considered. RC high-rise buildings with core wall structural system are selected as a case study building class with the three characteristic heights: 20-storey, 30-storey and 40-storey. In order to determine the most optimal IMs, 720 nonlinear time-history analyses are conducted for 60 ground motion records with a wide range of magnitudes and distances to source, and for various soil types, thus taking into account uncertainties during ground motion selection. The non-linear 3D models of the case study buildings are constructed. A detailed regression analysis and statistical processing of results are performed and appropriate PSDMs for the RC high-rise building are derived. Analyzing a large number of results it are adopted conclusions on the optimality of individual ground motion IMs for the RC high-rise building.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.413-424
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• 2016

The vertical design spectrum for Korea, which is known to belong to an intra-plate region, is developed from the ground motion records of the earthquakes occurred in Korea and overseas intra-plate regions. From the statistical analysis of the vertical response spectra, a mean plus one standard deviation spectrum in lognormal distribution is obtained. Regression analysis is performed on this curve to determine the shape of spectrum including transition periods. The developed design spectrum is valid for the estimation both spectral acceleration and displacement. The ratio of vertical to horizontal response spectrum for each record is calculated. Statistical analysis of the ratios rendered the vertical to horizontal ratio (V/H ratio). Subsequently the ratio between the peak vertical ground acceleration to the horizontal one is obtained.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2008

In probabilistic seismic analysis of nonlinear structural system, dynamic analysis is performed to obtain the distribution of the response estimate using input ground motion time histories which correspond to a given seismic hazard level. This study investigates the differences in the distribution of the responses and the failure probability according to input ground motion models. Two types of input ground motion models are considered: real earthquake records scaled to specified intensity level and artificial input ground motion fitted to design response spectrum. Simulation results fir a nonlinear SDOF system demonstrate that the spectrum matched input ground motion produces larger failure probability than those of scaled input ground motion due to biased responses. Such tendency is more remarkable in the site of soft soil conditions. Analysis results show that such difference of failure probability is due to the conservative estimation of design response spectrum in the range of long period of ground motion.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.489-500
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• 2011

The elastic seismic response of plan-asymmetric multi storey steel-frame buildings is investigated under earthquake loading with particular emphasis on forward-rupture directivity and fling records. Three asymmetric building systems are generated with different torsional stiffness and varying static eccentricity. The structural characteristic of these systems are designed according to UBC 97 code and their seismic responses subjected to a set of earthquake records are obtained from the response history analysis (RHA) as well as the linear static analysis (LSA). It is shown that, the elastic torsional response is influenced by the intensity of near-fault ground motions with different energy contents. In the extreme case of very strong earthquakes, the behaviour of torsionally stiff buildings and torsionally flexible buildings may differ substantially due to the fact that the displacement envelope of the deck depends on ground motion characteristics.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1027-1041
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• 2016

Different incident angles of ground motions have been considered to evaluate the relationship between floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient. The issues specifically addressed are (1) variability in torsional irregularity coefficient and floor rotations with varying incident angles of ground motion (2) contradictory relationship between floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient. To explore the stated issues, an evaluation based on relative variation in seismic response quantities of linear asymmetric structure under the influence of horizontal bi-directional excitation with varying seismic orientations has been carried out using response history analysis. Several typical earthquake records are applied to the structure to demonstrate the relative variations of floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient for different seismic orientations. It is demonstrated that (1) Torsional irregularity coefficient (TIC) increases as the story number decreases when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of the structure. For incident angles other than structure's reference axes, TIC either decreases as the story number decreases or there is no specific trend for TIC. Floor rotation increases in proportion to the story number when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of structure. For incident angles other than structure's reference axes, floor rotation either decreases as the story number increases or there is no specific trend for floor rotation and (2) TIC and floor rotation seems to be approximately inversely proportional to each other when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of the structure. For incident angles other than structure's reference axes, the relationship can even become directly proportional instead of inversely proportional.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.1091-1114
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• 2015

The adequacy of a number of advanced earthquake Intensity Measures (IMs) to predict the structural damage of earthquake resistant 3D R/C buildings is investigated in the present paper. To achieve this purpose three symmetric in plan and three asymmetric 5-storey R/C buildings are analyzed by nonlinear time history analysis using 74 bidirectional earthquake records. The two horizontal accelerograms of each ground motion are applied along the structural axes of the buildings and the structural damage is expressed in terms of the maximum and average interstorey drift as well as the overall structural damage index. For each individual pair of accelerograms the values of the aforementioned seismic damage measures are determined. Then, they are correlated with several strong motion scalar IMs that take into account both earthquake and structural characteristics. The research identified certain IMs which exhibit strong correlation with the seismic damage measures of the studied buildings. However, the degree of correlation between IMs and the seismic damage depends on the damage measure adopted. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the widely used spectral acceleration at the fundamental period of the structure is a relatively good IM for medium rise R/C buildings that possess small structural eccentricity.