Description: Appropriate estimates of earthquake response spectrum are essential for design of new structures, or seismic safety evaluation of existing structures. This paper presents an alternative procedure to construct design spectrum from a combined normalized response spectrum (NRS C ) which is obtained from pseudo-velocity spectrum with the ordinate scaled by different peak ground amplitudes (PGA, PGV, PGD) in different period regions. And a consecutive function f ( T ) used to normalize the ordinates is defined. Based on a comprehensive study of 220 strong ground motions recorded during recent eleven large worldwide earthquakes, the features of the NRS C are discussed and compared with the traditional normalized acceleration, velocity and displacement response spectra (NRS A , NRS V , NRS D ). And the relationships between ground amplitudes are evaluated by using a weighted mean method instead of the arithmetic mean. Then the NRS C is used to define the design spectrum with given peak ground amplitudes. At last, the smooth spectrum is compared with those derived by the former approaches, and the accuracy of the proposed spectrum is tested through an analysis of the dispersion of ground motion response spectra.

Description: An optimization method for the consistent evaluation of two Rayleigh damping coefficients is proposed. By minimizing an objective function such as an error term of the peak displacement of a structure, the two coefficients can be determined with response spectral analysis. The optimization method degenerates into the conventional method used in current practices when only two modes of vibration are included in the objective function. Therefore, the proposed method with all significant modes included for simplicity in practical applications results in suboptimal damping coefficients. The effects of both spatial distribution and frequency content of excitations as well as structural dynamic characteristics on the evaluation of Rayleigh damping coefficients were investigated with a five-story building structure. Two application examples with a 62-story high-rise building and a 840 m long cable-stayed bridge under ten earthquake excitations demonstrated the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method to account for all of the above effects.

Description: Based on the Bingham parallel-plate model, a simplified design method of shear-valve magnetorheological (MR) dampers is proposed considering the magnetic circuit optimization. Correspondingly, a new MR damper with a full-length effective damping path is proposed. The prototype dampers are also fabricated and studied numerically and experimentally. According to the test results, the Bingham parallel-plate model is further modified to obtain a damping force prediction model of the proposed MR dampers. This prediction model considers the magnetic saturation phenomenon. The study indicates that the proposed simplified design method is simple, effective and reliable. The maximum damping force of the proposed MR dampers with a full-length effective damping path is at least twice as large as those of conventional MR dampers. The dynamic range of damping force increases by at least 70%. The proposed damping force prediction model considers the magnetic saturation phenomenon and it can realize the actual characteristic of MR fluids. The model is able to predict the actual damping force of MR dampers precisely.

Description: This paper presents a method for seismic vulnerability analysis of bridge structures based on vector-valued intensity measure (vIM), which predicts the limit-state capacities efficiently with multi-intensity measures of seismic event. Accounting for the uncertainties of the bridge model, ten single-bent overpass bridge structures are taken as samples statistically using Latin hypercube sampling approach. 200 earthquake records are chosen randomly for the uncertainties of ground motions according to the site condition of the bridges. The uncertainties of structural capacity and seismic demand are evaluated with the ratios of demand to capacity in different damage state. By comparing the relative importance of different intensity measures, S a ( T 1 ) and S a ( T 2 ) are chosen as vIM. Then, the vector-valued fragility functions of different bridge components are developed. Finally, the system-level vulnerability of the bridge based on vIM is studied with Dunnett-Sobel class correlation matrix which can consider the correlation effects of different bridge components. The study indicates that an increment IMs from a scalar IM to vIM results in a significant reduction in the dispersion of fragility functions and in the uncertainties in evaluating earthquake risk. The feasibility and validity of the proposed vulnerability analysis method is validated and the bridge is more vulnerable than any components.

Description: Most current seismic design includes the nonlinear response of a structure through a response reduction factor ( R ). This allows the designer to use a linear elastic force-based approach while accounting for nonlinear behavior and deformation limits. In fact, the response reduction factor is used in modern seismic codes to scale down the elastic response of a structure. This study focuses on estimating the actual ‘ R ’ value for engineered design/construction of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Kathmandu valley. The ductility and overstrength of representative RC buildings in Kathmandu are investigated. Nonlinear pushover analysis was performed on structural models in order to evaluate the seismic performance of buildings. Twelve representative engineered irregular buildings with a variety of characteristics located in the Kathmandu valley were selected and studied. Furthermore, the effects of overstrength on the ductility factor, beam column capacity ratio on the building ductility, and load path on the response reduction factor, are examined. Finally, the results are further analyzed and compared with different structural parameters of the buildings.

Description: The seismic behavior of skewed bridges has not been well studied compared to straight bridges. Skewed bridges have shown extensive damage, especially due to deck rotation, shear keys failure, abutment unseating and column-bent drift. This research, therefore, aims to study the behavior of skewed and straight highway overpass bridges both with and without taking into account the effects of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) due to near-fault ground motions. Due to several sources of uncertainty associated with the ground motions, soil and structure, a probabilistic approach is needed. Thus, a probabilistic methodology similar to the one developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) has been utilized to assess the probability of damage due to various levels of shaking using appropriate intensity measures with minimum dispersions. The probabilistic analyses were performed for various bridge configurations and site conditions, including sand ranging from loose to dense and clay ranging from soft to stiff, in order to evaluate the effects. The results proved a considerable susceptibility of skewed bridges to deck rotation and shear keys displacement. It was also found that SSI had a decreasing effect on the damage probability for various demands compared to the fixed-base model without including SSI. However, deck rotation for all types of the soil and also abutment unseating for very loose sand and soft clay showed an increase in damage probability compared to the fixed-base model. The damage probability for various demands has also been found to decrease with an increase of soil strength for both sandy and clayey sites. With respect to the variations in the skew angle, an increase in skew angle has had an increasing effect on the amplitude of the seismic response for various demands. Deck rotation has been very sensitive to the increase in the skew angle; therefore, as the skew angle increased, the deck rotation responded accordingly. Furthermore, abutment unseating showed an increasing trend due to an increase in skew angle for both fixed-base and SSI models.

Description: Lateral deformation of liquefiable soil is a cause of much damage during earthquakes, reportedly more than other forms of liquefaction-induced ground failures. Researchers have presented studies in which the liquefied soil is considered as viscous fluid. In this manner, the liquefied soil behaves as non-Newtonian fluid, whose viscosity decreases as the shear strain rate increases. The current study incorporates computational fluid dynamics to propose a simplified dynamic analysis for the liquefaction-induced lateral deformation of earth slopes. The numerical procedure involves a quasi-linear elastic model for small to moderate strains and a Bingham fluid model for large strain states during liquefaction. An iterative procedure is considered to estimate the strain-compatible shear stiffness of soil. The post-liquefaction residual strength of soil is considered as the initial Bingham viscosity. Performance of the numerical procedure is examined by using the results of centrifuge model and shaking table tests together with some field observations of lateral ground deformation. The results demonstrate that the proposed procedure predicts the time history of lateral ground deformation with a reasonable degree of precision.

Description: An innovative variable stiffness device is proposed and investigated based on numerical simulations. The device, called a folding variable stiffness spring (FVSS), can be widely used, especially in tuned mass dampers (TMDs) with adaptive stiffness. An important characteristic of FVSS is its capability to change the stiffness between lower and upper bounds through a small change of distance between its supports. This special feature results in lower time-lag errors and readjustment in shorter time intervals. The governing equations of the device are derived and simplified for a symmetrical FVSS with similar elements. This device is then used to control a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structure as well as a multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) structure via a semi-active TMD. Numerical simulations are conducted to compare several control cases for these structures. To make it more realistic, a real direct current motor with its own limitations is simulated in addition to an ideal control case with no limitations and both the results are compared. It is shown that the proposed device can be effectively used to suppress undesirable vibrations of a structure and considerably improves the performance of the controller compared to a passive device.

Description: The problem of vibration isolation by rectangular open trenches in a plane strain context is numerically studied using a finite element code, PLAXIS. The soil media is assumed to be linear elastic, isotropic, and homogeneous subjected to a vertical harmonic load producing steady-state vibration. The present model is validated by comparing it with previously published works. The key geometrical features of a trench, i.e., its depth, width, and distance from the source of excitation, are normalized with respect to the Rayleigh wavelength. The attenuation of vertical and horizontal components of vibration is studied for various trench dimensions against trench locations varied from an active to a passive case. Results are depicted in non-dimensional forms and conclusions are drawn regarding the effects of geometrical parameters in attenuating vertical and horizontal vibration components. The screening efficiency is primarily governed by the normalized depth of the barrier. The effect of width has little significance except in some specific cases. Simplified regression models are developed to estimate average amplitude reduction factors. The models applicable to vertical vibration cases are found to be in excellent agreement with previously published results.

Description: To identify the model structure parameters in shaking table tests from seismic response, especially from time-varying response records, this paper presents a new methodology by combining the online recursive Adaptive Forgetting through Multiple Models (AFMM) and offline Auto-Regression with eXogenous variables (ARX) model. First, the AFMM is employed to detect whether the response of model structure is time-invariant or time-varying when subjected to strong motions. Second, if the response is time-invariant, the modal parameters are identified from the entire response record, such as the acceleration time-history using the ARX model. If the response is time-varying, the acceleration record is divided into three segments according to the accurate time-varying points detected by AFMM, and parameters are identified by only using the tail segment data, which is time-invariant and suited for analysis by the ARX model. Finally, the changes in dynamic properties due to various strong motions are obtained using the presented methodology. The feasibility and advantages of the method are demonstrated by identifying the modal parameters of a 12-story reinforced concrete (RC) frame structure in a shaking table test.