Shake table testing of a full-scale seven-story steel-wood apartment building

In July 2009, a full-scale mid-rise light-frame wood apartment building was subjected to a series of earthquakes at the world’s largest shake table in Miki, Japan. The test program consisted of two major phases: the building tested in the first phase consisted of a single-story steel special moment frame (SMF) with six stories of wood on top, and the second phase consisted of locking down the steel story and testing the six-story light-frame wood building by itself. This paper focuses on the test results for the seven-story steel-wood building tested to earthquakes having return periods of 72 and 665 years. The objective of this phase of the test program was to investigate the performance of a mid-rise light-frame wood building with a first-story moment frame when subjected to a major earthquake, essentially providing a landmark data set to the seismic engineering research community. The building consisted of 225 square meters for retail space at the first story and 1350 square meters of multi-family residential living space with 23 apartment units above. The building was instrumented with just over 300 sensors and 50 LED optical tracking points to measure the component and global responses, respectively. In this paper the seven-story test specimen is described and the resulting seismic response and behavior is summarized. Detailed damage inspection was performed following each of these tests, and representative images are presented and discussed. The building was found to perform excellently, with very little damage following an event that was slightly larger (×1.16) than the design-level event for the city of Los Angeles, California. The peak global drift at roof level was 166 mm, and the peak inter-story drifts were approximately 1.3%.     

Method for detecting moment connection fracture using high-frequency transients in recorded accelerations

The 1994 Northridge earthquake caused brittle fractures in steel moment frame building connections, despite causing little visible building damage in most cases. Future strong earthquakes are likely to cause similar damage to the many un-retrofitted pre-Northridge buildings in the western US and elsewhere. Without obvious permanent building deformation, costly intrusive inspections are currently the only way to determine if major fracture damage that compromises building safety has occurred. Building instrumentation has the potential to provide engineers and owners with timely information on fracture occurrence. Structural dynamics theory predicts and scale model experiments have demonstrated that sudden, large changes in structure properties caused by moment connection fractures will cause transient dynamic response. A method is proposed for detecting the building-wide level of connection fracture damage, based on observing high-frequency, fracture-induced transient dynamic responses in strong motion accelerograms. High-frequency transients are short (<1 s), sudden-onset waveforms with frequency content above 25 Hz that are visually apparent in recorded accelerations. Strong motion data and damage information from intrusive inspections collected from 24 sparsely instrumented buildings following the 1994 Northridge earthquake are used to evaluate the proposed method. The method’s overall success rate for this data set is 67%, but this rate varies significantly with damage level. The method performs reasonably well in detecting significant fracture damage and in identifying cases with no damage, but fails in cases with few fractures. Combining the method with other damage indicators and removing records with excessive noise improves the ability to detect the level of damage.     

智利地震钢筋混凝土高层建筑震害对我国高层结构设计的启示

2010年2月27日在南美洲智利发生的8.8级大地震,造成了钢筋混凝土高层建筑的严重破坏,这是近年来现代钢筋混凝土高层建筑经历的最大地震,引起了国内外工程设计人员的广泛关注.以智利高层建筑结构体系特点入手,分别介绍了智利地震中钢筋混凝土剪力墙高层建筑、立面收进复杂高层建筑、连体复杂高层建筑、带消能减震支撑超高层建筑、带...     

Model test study on the dynamic response of the portal section of two parallel tunnels in a seismically active area

A model test of the portals of two parallel tunnels is carried out to learn about the dynamic response of tunnel liner and the interaction between surrounding rock and liner in earthquakes. The experiment results show that: first, when the seismic acceleration traverses the model material, the low-frequency segment of seismic acceleration is magnified and the high-frequency segment of seismic acceleration is attenuated; second, the horizontal shear failure of the surrounding rock is caused by the interaction between the surrounding rock and the tunnel liner, and the cracks in the surrounding rock grow nearly in the same direction, however, because of the different constraints on the tunnel liner by the surrounding rock outside the tunnel, the destruction degree is different; third, the liner cracks of the left tunnel with short length appear mainly at the left tunnel entrance, the cracks of right tunnel with large length appear mainly at the right tunnel entrance and the tunnel cross-section nearly which is in the same vertical plane with the left tunnel portal, and the liner cracks are distributed mainly on the closer side of two liners between the two holes; finally, in the same vertical testing cross-section, the liner maximal strain at the inner sides between two tunnels is greater than outer sides. In addition, the cross-section maximal strain on the right tunnel decreases with the increasing distance between the tested cross-section and a reference vertical plane containing the left tunnel portal.     

汶川地震余震记录及紫坪铺面板堆石坝余震反应研究

对汶川地震后紫坪铺面板堆石坝台阵余震记录进行了分析,研究实测余震地震动频谱特性等基本特征。选择有代表性的坝址基岩台站记录到的余震地震动作为大坝地震动输入,对紫坪铺大坝进行了三维动力有限元分析,并将计算得到的坝体加速度放大倍数与不同坝高台站的监测数据进行了对比。研究结果表明：实测余震地震动加速度反应谱在短周期部分有一定波动,在周期稍长时随周期增加而衰减,符合地震动反应谱的基本特征;综合实测大坝反应、数值计算结果以及以往实测相关资料,本次紫坪铺大坝余震实测结果反映了土工构筑物反应的一般规律。     

A study of damping errors in correlation-driven stochastic realizations using short data sets

A numerical study, motivated by applications in structural engineering, is conducted to investigate the effects of using short data sets for the identification of system damping in correlation-driven stochastic realizations. Sets of single-degree-of-freedom systems are excited with white noise and the eigensystem realization algorithm, with the aid of the modal confidence factor, is employed for the identification scheme. The study reveals information regarding the effects of sample size and Hankel matrix dimension on the resulting estimates of system damping. Results illustrate that significant bias is associated with using short data sets in a correlation-driven framework; in particular errors are seen to increase for high frequency, high-damping systems. Some of this error can be attributed to the inclusion of problematic regions of the correlation function in addition to leakage from the correlation estimation.     

Dynamic buckling of anchored steel tanks subjected to horizontal earthquake excitation

We investigate dynamic buckling of aboveground steel tanks with conical roofs and anchored to the foundation, subjected to horizontal components of real earthquake records. The study attempts to estimate the critical horizontal peak ground acceleration (Critical PGA), which induces elastic buckling at the top of the cylindrical shell, for the impulsive hydrodynamic response of the tank-liquid system. Finite elements models of three cone roof tanks with height to diameter ratios (H/D) of 0.40, 0.63 and 0.95 and with a liquid level of 90% of the height of the cylinder were used in this study. The tank models were subjected to accelerograms recorded during the 1986 El Salvador and 1966 Parkfield earthquakes, and dynamic buckling computations (including material and geometric non-linearity) were carried out using the finite element package ABAQUS. For the El Salvador accelerogram, the critical PGA for buckling at the top of the cylindrical shell decreased with the H/D ratio of the tank, while similar critical PGAs regardless of the H/D ratio were obtained for the tanks subjected to the Parkfield accelerogram. The elastic buckling at the top occurred as a critical state for the medium height and tallest models regardless of the accelerogram considered, because plasticity was reached for a PGA larger than the critical PGA. For the shortest model (H/D=0.40), depending on the accelerogram considered, plasticity was reached at the shell before buckling at the top of the shell.     

Neural Networks for Decentralized Control of Cable-Stayed Bridge

The system identification and vibration control of a cable-stayed bridge are considered difficult to achieve due to the bridge’s structural complexity and system uncertainties. In this paper, based on the concept of decentralized information structures, a decentralized, nonparametric identification and control algorithm with neural networks is proposed for the purpose of suppressing the vibration of a documented six-cable-stayed bridge model induced by earthquake excitations. The control strategy proposed here uses the stay cables as active tendons to provide control forces through appropriate actuators. Each individual actuator is controlled by a decentralized neurocontroller that only uses local information. The feature of decentralized control simplifies the implementation of the control algorithms and makes decentralized control easy to practice and cost effective. The effectiveness of the decentralized identification and control algorithm based on neural networks is evaluated through numerical simulations. And the adaptability of the decentralized neurocontrollers for different kinds of earthquake excitations and for a damaged cable-stayed bridge model is demonstrated via numerical simulations.     

Statistical evaluation of the damage potential of earthquake ground motions

This study focuses on the damage potential of earthquake ground motions based on the inelastic dynamic response of equivalent single degree of freedom structures. Their yield resistances are selected in accordance with seismic design codes. An index accounting for the accumulation of damage due to inelastic excursions is used to represent structural damage. A set of 94 ground motions are employed for this analysis, which are all scaled to the same peak ground acceleration of 0.4 g. Earthquake ground motions are classified with respect to both the ratio of peak velocity to peak acceleration (V/A ratio) and their effective excitation duration. The effect of these parameters on damage potential is investigated by using sensitivity analysis and probabilistic techniques. It is concluded that both V/A ratio and effective duration significantly influence the damage potential of earthquake ground motions, although they are not represented appropriately by the spectral definitions of earthquake excitations in seismic design codes.     

Dynamic Behavior of Steel Deck Tension-Tied Arch Bridges to Seismic Excitation

The dynamic responses of steel deck, tension-tied, arch bridges subjected to earthquake excitations were investigated. The 620 ft (189 m) Birmingham Bridge, located in Pittsburgh, was selected as an analytical model for the study. The bridge has a single deck tension-tied arch span and is supported by two bridge piers, which in turn are supported by the pile foundations. Due to the complex configuration of the deck system, two analytical models were considered to represent the bridge deck system. Using the normal mode method, seismic responses were calculated for two bridge models and the results were compared with each other. Three orthogonal records of the El Centro 1940 earthquake were used as input for the seismic response analysis. The modal contributions were also checked in order to obtain a reasonable representation of the response and to minimize computational cost. Displacements and stresses at the panel points of the bridge are calculated and presented in graphical form.