Narrow Results

The wave-passage effect of earthquake loadings on long-span structures is studied through use of a multiply-supported single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system excited by traveling seismic ground motions. The absolute acceleration response of the SDOF system is represented in the analytical form in the time domain. The frequency-domain analysis results indicate that the wave-passage effect may reduce the absolute acceleration response and the earthquake loading acting on the multiply-supported SDOF system. Further, for different velocities of wave-passage, the response spectra are calculated to represent the reduction of the maximum earthquake loading on the long-span system caused by the wave-passage effect. The computation results of the response spectra indicate that the reduction of the maximum earthquake loading is fluctuant, but has a general tendency to decrease with the increase in the apparent wave velocity and the structural natural period.

Quantifying the higher-mode effects on the seismic demands of buildings may benefit not only the awareness of characteristics of the seismic responses of buildings, but also the development of rapid/simplified methods for the seismic assessment of buildings. This study proposes an approach that is applicable for quantifying the aforementioned effects, covering the full range of building heights and deformation types. The vehicle used in this proposed approach is the generalized building model, which has been modified from the conventional cantilever beam model. In addition to building height and deformation type, the strength ratio of each vibration mode and the site class of buildings are the parameters considered in this study. The higher-mode effects on floor displacements, inter-story drift ratios, floor accelerations, and base shears with relation to the aforementioned parameters are investigated. Finally, the proposed approach is verified via the investigation of the higher-mode effects of a 20-story exemplar building.

Bouncing is a common human activity that is frequently observed in large-span structures such as sports stadiums and concert halls; this activity can cause vibration serviceability problems that must be considered at the structural design stage. Current design codes suggest methods for predicting structural responses under rhythmic bouncing excitations. However, these methods typically do not consider the interaction effect between the crowd and structure, which is highly significant, particularly for large groups of people. Such an effect can quantitatively be evaluated from the structural dynamic property changes attributable to the crowd. Using the random distribution of human model parameters given in a previous study, we propose an empirical formula to predict the frequency and damping ratio of the coupled system via statistical analysis. The structural dynamic properties are updated. A response spectrum method framework that employs the updated structural dynamic properties is proposed and validated through a series of experiments on crowd bouncing. The results show that the response spectrum method provides a reasonable prediction of the structural responses. Hence, this study provides an effective method for quantitatively considering the interaction effect when calculating structural responses at the design stage.

Strong ground motion close to a fault can be expected to be very large, so its estimation is essential for human safety. Although a few strong-motion data exist for the west Eurasian region, we proposed in a previous work [Berge-Thierry et al., 2003] an attenuation relation for spectral acceleration using strong-motion data recorded in west Eurasia (mainly in Europe) and some in the western United States: this relationship was derived for the French Safety Rule, which is applied for seismic hazard assessment at nuclear power plants. In this study, we propose a constraining of the amplitude saturation term related to the proximity of the fault, and an adding of an amplitude saturation term in the regression model. We add, to the data-set previously used to derive the west Eurasian attenuation relationship strong-motions recorded during recent large earthquakes: the 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu (Kobe) event in Japan and the 1999 Kocaeli (Izmit) event in Turkey. The regression analysis, adopted from Fukushima and Tanaka [1990], is non-linear, so an iterative procedure is applied. The determined regression coefficients lead to a prediction of a peak ground acceleration of about 0.7g for soil site conditions at a fault distance of 0.5 km. The Q coefficient deduced from the distance coefficient is in agreement with scattering Q models. The introduction of the saturation term leads to significantly lower predictions of average spectral accelerations at short distances as compared with using the Berge-Thierry et al. [2003] empirical model.

In the last century alone two to three million people died in earthquakes; More than 240 000 perish in Tangshan earthquake in China, 20 000 in the Izmit [Ikeya, 2004] 50 000 in India Bhuj earthquake, 100 000 in Sumatra and 90 000 in Pakistan earthquakes. Earthquake engineering has progressed to the stage where it is now computationally practical and desirable to perform a dynamic analysis of most civil engineering structures. Such an analysis requires the engineer to create an accurate analytical model of the structures as well as prescribe an earthquake input excitation. The design earthquake input excitation for the site under consideration is usually prescribed in the form of response spectra or in the form of an ensemble of artificial earthquake acceleration time histories. There is every need for generating artificial accelerograms since recorded accelerograms are very limited at site. This paper proposes five neural network based models for the generation of artificial earthquake and response spectra using wavelet transforms (WT) and principal component analysis (PCA) where the recorded accelerograms are limited at site of interest. The proposed model is compared with Lee and Han's model. The data for 25 earthquakes are taken for training and 4 for testing. Just like response spectra, this is also a convenient way of obtaining the design solution to a structural dynamics problem and is certainly an important tool.