• 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.18 no.3
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• pp.297-312
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• 2020

The KiK-net by NIED is a vertical array measurement system. In the database of KiK-net, singular pulse waves were observed in the seismic record at the borehole of TTRH02 during the mainshock (the magnitude of Japan Meteorological Agency (M_J) 7.3, M_W 6.8) and aftershock (M_j 4.2) of Tottori-ken Seibu earthquake in 2000. Singular pulse waves were also detected in the seismic records at the borehole of IWTH25 during the Iwate-Miyagi Nairiku earthquake in 2008 (M_J 7.2, M_W 6.9). These pulse waves are investigated by using the wave shape analysis methods, e.g., the non-stationary Fourier spectra and the double integrated displacement profiles. Two types of vibration modes are discriminated as the occurrence mechanism of the singular pulse waves. One corresponds to the reversal points in the displacement profile with the amplitude from 10^-4 m to 10^-1 m, which is mainly related to the fault activity and the amplification pass including the mechanical amplification (collision) of the seismograph in the casing pipe. The other is the cyclic pulse waves in the interval of reversal points, which is estimated as the backlash of the seismograph itself with the amplitude from 10^-5 m to 10^-4 m.