• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제42권1호
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• pp.121-129
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• 2012

All contemporary seismic Codes have adopted smooth design acceleration response spectra, which have derived by statistical analysis of many elastic response spectra of natural accelerograms. The above smooth design spectra are characterized by two main branches, an horizontal branch that is 2.5 times higher than the peak ground acceleration, and a declining parabolic branch. According to Eurocode EN/1998, the period range of the horizontal, flat branch is extended from 0.1 s, for rock soils, up to 0.8 s for softer ones. However, from many natural recorded accelerograms of important earthquakes, the real spectral amplification factor appears to be much higher than 2.5 and this means that the spectrum leads to an unsafe seismic design of the structures. This point is an issue open to question and it is the object of the present study. In the present paper, the spectral amplification factor of the smooth design acceleration spectra is re-calculated on the grounds of a known "reliability index" for a desired probability of exceedance. As a pilot scheme, the seismic area of Greece is chosen, as it is the most seismically hazardous area in Europe. The accelerograms of the 82 most important earthquakes, which have occurred in Greece during the last 38 years, are used. The soil categories are taken into account according to EN/1998. The results that have been concluded from these data are compared with the results obtained from other strong earthquakes reported in the World literature.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.135-153
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• 2013

This study investigates the direct displacement based design (DDBD) approach for different types of reinforced concrete structural systems including single moment-resisting, dual wall-frame and dual steel-braced systems. In this methodology, the displacement profile is calculated and the equivalent single degree of freedom system is then modeled considering the damping characteristics of each member. Having calculated the effective period and secant stiffness of the structure, the base shear is obtained, based on which the design process can be carried out. For each system three frames are designed using DDBD approach. The frames are then analyzed using nonlinear time-history analysis with 7 earthquake accelerograms and the damage index is investigated through lateral drift profile of the models. Results of the analyses and comparison of the nonlinear time-history analysis results indicate efficiency of the DDBD approach for different reinforced concrete structural systems.

• 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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• 제7권6호
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• pp.895-908
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• 2014

The main objective of critical excitation methods is to reveal the worst possible response of structures. This goal is accomplished by considering the uncertainties of ground motion, which is subjected to the appropriate constraints, such as earthquake power and intensity limit. The concentration of this current study is on the theoretical optimization aspect, as is the case with the majority of conventional critical excitation methods. However, these previous studies on critical excitation lead to a discontinuous power spectral density (PSD). This paper introduces some critical excitations which contain proper continuity in frequency domain. The main idea for generating such continuous excitations stems from the combination of two continuous functions. On the other hand, in order to provide a non-stationary model, this paper attempts to present an appropriate envelope function, which unlike the previous envelope functions, can properly cover the natural earthquakes' accelerograms based on multi-peak conditions. Finally, the proposed method is developed into the multiple-degree-of-freedom (M.D.O.F) structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.319-334
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• 2018

In this paper, an analytical study was carried out to propose an optimum base-isolated system for the design of steel structures equipped with lead rubber bearings (LRB). For this, 5 and 10-storey steel moment resisting frames (MRFs) were designed as Special Moment Frame (SMF). These two-dimensional and three-bay frames equipped with a set of isolation systems within a predefined range that minimizes the response of the base-isolated frames subjected to a series of earthquakes. In the design of LRB, two main parameters, namely, isolation period (T) and the ratio of strength to weight (Q/W) supported by isolators were considered as 2.25, 2.5, 2.75 and 3 s, 0.05, 0.10 and 0.15, respectively. The Force-deformation behavior of the isolators was modelled by the bi-linear behavior which could reflect the nonlinear characteristics of the lead-plug bearings. The base-isolated frames were modelled using a finite element program and those performances were evaluated in the light of the nonlinear time history analyses by six natural accelerograms compatible with seismic hazard levels of 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years. The performance of the isolated frames was assessed in terms of roof displacement, relative displacement, interstorey drift, absolute acceleration, base shear and hysteretic curve.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제22권2호
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• pp.185-195
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• 2006

Nowadays it is very necessary to generate artificial accelerograms because of lack of adequate earthquake records and vast usage of time-history dynamic analysis to calculate responses of structures. According to the lack of natural records, the best choice is to use proper artificial earthquake records for the specified design zone. These records should be generated in a way that would contain seismic properties of a vast area and therefore could be applied as design records. The main objective of this paper is to present a new method based on wavelet theory to generate more artificial earthquake records, which are compatible with target spectrum. Wavelets are able to decompose time series to several levels that each level covers a specific range of frequencies. If an accelerogram is transformed by Fourier transform to frequency domain, then wavelets are considered as a transform in time-scale domain which frequency has been changed to scale in the recent domain. Since wavelet theory separates each signal, it is able to generate so many artificial records having the same target spectrum.