• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.79-87
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• 2017

Seismic analysis of local site conditions is fundamental for a reliable site seismic hazard assessment. It plays a major role in mitigation of seismic damage potential through the prediction of surface ground motion in terms of amplitude, frequency content and duration. Such analysis requires the determination of the transfer function, which is a simple tool for characterizing a soil profile by estimating its vibration frequencies and its amplification potential. In this study, numerical simulations are carried out and are then combined with a statistical study to allow the characterization of design sites classified by the Algerian Building Seismic Code (RPA99, ver 2003), by average transfer functions. The mean transfer functions are thereafter used to compute RPA99 average site factors. In this regard, coming up seismic fields are simulated based on Power Spectral Density Functions (PSDF) defined at the rock basement. Results are also used to compute average site factor where, actual and synthetic time histories are introduced. In absence of measurement data, it is found that the proposed approach can be used for a better soil characterization.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.3_4
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• pp.413-434
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• 2012

This paper presents a displacement-based seismic design method with damage control, in which the targets for the considered performance level are set as displacements and a damage distribution is proposed by the designer. The method is based on concepts of basic structural dynamics and of a reference single degree of freedom system associated to the fundamental mode with a bilinear behaviour. Based on the characteristics of this behaviour curve and on the requirements of modal spectral analysis, the stiffness and strength of the structural elements of the structure satisfying the target design displacement are calculated. The formulation of this method is presented together with the formulations of two other existing methods currently considered of practical interest. To illustrate the application of the proposed method, 5 reinforced concrete plane frames: 8, 17 and 25 storey regular, and 8 and 12 storey irregular in elevation. All frames are designed for a seismic demand defined by single earthquake record in order to compare the performances and damage distributions used as design targets with the corresponding results of the nonlinear step by step analyses of the designed structures subjected to the same seismic demand. The performances and damage distributions calculated with these analyses show a good agreement with those postulated as targets.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.1A
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• pp.59-67
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• 2008

Acceleration time history used in the seismic analysis of nuclear power plant structures should envelop a target power spectral density (PSD) function in addition to the design response spectrum in order to have sufficient energy at each frequency for the purpose of ensuring adequate load. The safety for complex long-span highway bridges cannot be over-emphasize. An alternative method to improve the seismic capacity is to ensure the minimum PSD function of the applied seismic load. This study proposes a technical scheme to obtain the reference power spectral density function by using artificial earthquakes which are compatible with the highway bridge design spectrum.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.440-447
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• 2000

In order to evaluate the cost effectiveness of seismic isolation for bridges in low and moderate seismic region, a method of calculation minimum life-cycle cost of seismic-isolated bridges under specific acceleration level and soil condition is developed. Input ground motion is modeled as spectral density function compatible with response spectrum for combination of acceleration coefficient and site coefficient. Failure probability is calculated by spectrum analysis based on random vibration theories to simplify repetitive calculations in the minimization procedure. Ductility of piers and its effects on cost effectiveness are considered by stochastic linearization method. Cost function and cost effectiveness index are defined by taking into consideration the characteristics of seismic isolated bridges. Limit states for calculation of failure probability are defined on superstructure, isolator and pier, respectively. The results of example design and analysis show that seismic isolation is more cost-effective in low and moderate seismic region than in high seismic region.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.487-499
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• 2019

Energy-based seismic design of structures has gradually become prominent in today's structural engineering investigations because of being more rational and reliable when it is compared to traditional force-based and displacement-based methods. Energy-based approaches have widely taken place in many previous studies and investigations and undoubtedly, they are going to play more important role in future seismic design codes, too. This paper aims to compute the maximum earthquake energy input to elastic single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems for selected real ground motion records. A data set containing 100 real ground motion records which have the same site soil profiles has been selected from Pacific Earthquake Research (PEER) database. Response time history (RTH) analyses have been conducted for elastic SDOF systems having a constant damping ratio and natural periods of 0.1 s to 3.0 s. Totally 3000 RTH analyses have been performed and the maximum mass normalized earthquake input energy values for all records have been computed. Previous researchers' approaches have been compared to the results of RTH analyses and an approach which considers the pseudo-spectral velocity with Arias Intensity has been proposed. Graphs of the maximum earthquake input energy versus the maximum pseudo-spectral velocity have been obtained. The results show that there is a good agreement between the maximum input energy demands of RTH analysis and the other approaches and the maximum earthquake input energy is a relatively stable response parameter to be used for further seismic design and evaluations.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.39-55
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• 2015

Usually the analyses of structures are carried out by assuming the base of structures to be fixed. However, the soil beneath foundation alters the earthquake loading and varies the response of structure. Hence, it is not realistic to analyze structures by considering it to be fixed. The importance of soil-structure interaction was realized from the past failures of massive structures by neglecting the effect of soil in seismic analysis. The analysis of massive structures requires soil flexibility to be considered to avoid failure and ensure safety. Present study, considers the seismic behavior of multi-storey reinforced concrete narrow and wide buildings of various heights with and without shear wall supported on raft foundation incorporating the effect of soil flexibility. Analysis of the three dimensional models of six different shear wall positions founded on four different soils has been carried out using finite element software LS DYNA. The study investigates the differences in spectral acceleration coefficient (Sa/g), base shear and storey shear obtained following the seismic provisions of Indian standard code IS: 1893 (2002) (IS) and International building code IBC: 2012 (IBC). The base shear values obtained as per IBC provisions are higher than IS values.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.789-794
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• 2007

Recently, the necessity of efficient and exact method to analyze structures is increasing with the importance of the seismic analysis. But the finite element method used in many field do not give the exact solution unless the length of the element is very short enough to represent the deformation of the element. Because the amount of computer calculation increase with the increasing of the number of degree of freedoms, the finite element method for the exact dynamic analysis of structures would not be efficient. To solve these problems, spectral clement method combined spectral method using the principle of wave mechanics and finite element method for the analysis of discrete models is applied to evaluate the behavior of the spatial structures. As a result of analysis. it becomes clear that the spectral element method is faster and more exact than the finite clement method.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.557-566
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• 2019

The evaluation of the seismic hazard for a given site is to estimate the seismic ground motion at the surface. This is the result of the combination of the action of the seismic source, which generates seismic waves, the propagation of these waves between the source and the site, and site local conditions. The aim of this work is to evaluate the sensitivity of dynamic response of extended structures to spatial variable ground motions (SVGM). All factors of spatial variability of ground motion are considered, especially local site effect. In this paper, a method is presented to simulate spatially varying earthquake ground motions. The scheme for generating spatially varying ground motions is established for spatial locations on the ground surface with varying site conditions. In this proposed method, two steps are necessary. Firstly, the base rock motions are assumed to have the same intensity and are modelled with a filtered Tajimi-Kanai power spectral density function. An empirical coherency loss model is used to define spatial variable seismic ground motions at the base rock. In the second step, power spectral density function of ground motion on surface is derived by considering site amplification effect based on the one dimensional seismic wave propagation theory. Several dynamics analysis of a curved viaduct to various cases of spatially varying seismic ground motions are performed. For comparison, responses to uniform ground motion, to spatial ground motions without considering local site effect, to spatial ground motions with considering coherency loss, phase delay and local site effects are also calculated. The results showed that the generated seismic signals are strongly conditioned by the local site effect. In the same sense, the dynamic response of the viaduct is very sensitive of the variation of local geological conditions of the site. The effect of neglecting local site effect in dynamic analysis gives rise to a significant underestimation of the seismic demand of the structure.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.269-277
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• 2019

In a seismic design, a structural demand by an earthquake load is determined by design response spectra. The ground motion is a three-dimensional movement; therefore, the design response spectra in each direction need to be assigned. However, in most design codes, an identical design response spectrum is used in two horizontal directions. Unlike these design criteria, a realistic seismic input motion should be applied for a seismic evaluation of structures. In this study, the definition of horizontal spectral acceleration representing the two-horizontal spectral acceleration is reviewed. Based on these methodologies, the horizontal responses of observed ground motions are calculated. The data used in the analysis are recorded accelerograms at the stations near the epicenters of recent earthquakes which are the 2007 Odeasan earthquake, 2016 Gyeongju earthquake, and 2017 Pohang earthquake. Geometric mean-based horizontal response spectra and maximum directional response spectrum are evaluated and their differences are compared over the period range. Statistical representation of the relations between geometric mean and maximum directional spectral acceleration for horizontal direction and spectral acceleration for vertical direction are also evaluated. Finally, discussions and suggestions to consider these different two horizontal directional spectral accelerations in the seismic performance evaluation are presented.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.35-47
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• 2003

Seismic ground motion can vary significantly over distances comparable to the length of a majority of highway bridges on multiple supports. This paper presents results of fragility analysis of two actual highway bridges under ground motion with spatial variation. Ground motion time histories are artificially generated with different amplitudes, phases, as well as frequency contents at different support locations. Monte Carlo simulation is performed to study dynamic responses of the bridges under these ground motions. The effect of spatial variation on the seismic response is systematically examined and the resulting fragility curves are compared with those under identical support ground motion. This study shows that ductility demands for the bridge columns can be underestimated if the bridge is analyzed using identical support ground motions rather than differential support ground motions. Fragility curves are developed as functions of different measures of ground motion intensity including peak ground acceleration(PGA), peak ground velocity(PGV), spectral acceleration(SA), spectral velocity(SV) and spectral intensity(SI). This study represents a first attempt to develop fragility curves under spatially varying ground motion and provides information useful for improvement of the current seismic design codes so as to account for the effects of spatial variation in the seismic design of long-span bridges.