Journal of Earthquake and Tsunami

An experimental study was carried out to investigate the mitigation effect of vertical walls on a wharf model subjected to tsunami bores. Dam-break waves were generated in a flume to simulate tsunami bore propagation, the bore characteristics were observed, and the tsunami pressures on vertical walls and a wharf model were measured. Results indicate different characteristics for bores traveling on wet-bed and dry-bed. The tsunami bore impact on a vertical wall was shown to exhibit four stages, and the time-history of the pressure exhibits three phases accordingly. Based on the law of conservation of energy, an equation for estimating the pressure exerted on the mid-point of the wall was proposed with coefficient of 1.8–2.4, and found to be suitable in this experimental range. Based on experimental data, an equation of the mitigation effect of vertical walls on tsunami was proposed as a function of the inundation depth, the wall height and the deck height. The predicted values from the equation are generally within $\pm 20\%$ of the measured values.

The generation and propagation of tsunami caused by a curvilinear stochastic seismic faulting driven by two Gaussian white noise processes in the $x$- and $y$-directions are investigated. This model is used to study the tsunami build up and propagation during and after a realistic curvilinear source model represented by a random spreading slip-fault model. The amplification of tsunami amplitudes builds up progressively as time increases during the generation process due to wave focusing while the maximum wave amplitude decreases with time during the propagation process due to geometric spreading and dispersion. The increase of the normalized noise intensities on the random bottom leads to an increase in oscillations and amplitude of the free surface elevation. Tsunami waveforms using linearized shallow water theory for constant water depth are analyzed analytically by transform methods. The mean and variance of the random tsunami waves are derived and analyzed as a function of the noise intensities, propagated uplift length and the average depth of the ocean along the generation and propagation path.

With increased emphasis on performance-based seismic design, the need for appropriate ground motion time histories for use in nonlinear dynamic analyses is felt accutely. However, it is generally not possible to get a suitable recorded time history consistent with the estimated hazard at a specific site. The ground motion prediction models are therefore derived/developed from a statistical analysis of recorded ground motion for a variety of source and site conditions to address this need. Most often, the ground motion prediction models are developed to model the response spectrum amplitudes at a set of natural periods and the ground motion time history, if required, is then generated to be consistent with this predicted response spectrum. These simulated time histories often lack in modeling the wave arrivals and temporal variation in the distribution of energy with respect to frequency. In this paper, we present a wavelet-based ground motion prediction model for directly generating ground motion time history that is consistent with the postulated scenario earthquake at a site.

To elucidate the ground motion amplification due to soil and topographic effects, an analytical formulation based on wavefunction expansion is derived for the scattering of plane SH waves by a semi-cylindrical valley partially filled with a crescent-shaped soil layer. The site responses consisting of both soil and topographic effects from the partially filled alluvial valley and the pure topographic contribution from the homogeneous valley of the same geometry are calculated and compared. It is found that the soil amplification effects are usually larger than the topographic amplification effects within the alluvial valley, while the topographic effects dominate the amplification pattern of ground motions outside the alluvial valley. Generally, the maximum soil amplification generally far outweighs the maximum topographic amplification. The material parameters and filling degree of the soil layer are found to affect the magnitude and the pattern of ground motion amplitude on the valley surface depending on the irregular topography, the frequency content and obliquity of the wave incidence.

In current tsunami prevention and mitigation, evacuation is the most important method of saving people’s lives. Tsunami evacuation is analyzed for a given travel time and a specific inundation area. Before evacuation analysis, the tsunami inundation and tsunami travel time are first calculated by numerical modeling. This paper analyzes the tsunami evacuation of Haimen Town, Jiaojiang District, Taizhou City, China, under the hypothesis of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake scenario in the Ryukyu Trench. The Cornell multi-grid coupled tsunami (COMCOT) model and Tsunami Travel Time (TTT) model are used to calculate the tsunami inundation and tsunami travel time, respectively. GIS techniques are used to solve the evacuation problem. Both horizontal and vertical evacuations are adopted based on the Chinese community characteristics, disaster prevention facilities, land use, and other practical conditions. A cost raster is used to analyze the arrival cost of each grid in the study area. The location allocation and cost allocation methods are used to solve shelter selection and coverage problems, respectively. The network analyst is applied to provide evacuation routes for each community. The evacuation analysis results can provide a scientific reference for the development of tsunami evacuation plans.

This paper developed multi-objective optimization design of proportional–derivative (PD) and proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controllers for seismic control of high-rise buildings. The case study is an 11-story realistic building equipped with active tuned mass damper (ATMD). Four earthquakes and nine performance indices are taken into account to assess the performance of the controllers. To create a good trade-off between the performance and robustness of the closed-loop structural system, a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm, NSGA-II, is employed. To evaluate the degree of robustness of the controllers, four structural models with uncertainties in the nominal model of the structure is considered. For comparison purposes, a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller is also designed in the numerical simulations. Simulation results show that the proposed PD and PID controllers significantly perform better than the LQR in reduction of structural responses. Also, it is shown that the LQR does not provide a good performance in strong earthquakes. However, PD and PID controllers are able to significantly reduce structural responses. Moreover, it is shown that the PID has a better performance than the PD. The results also show that the proposed controllers are capable of maintaining a desired performance in the presence of modeling errors. They also have several advantages over modern controllers in terms of simplicity and reduction of required sensors and computational resources in tall buildings.