Millions of lives have been lost over the years as a result of the effects of earthquakes. One of these devastating effects is slope failure, more commonly known as landslide. Over the years, seismologists and engineers have teamed up to better record data during an earthquake. As technology has advanced, the data obtained have become more refined, allowing engineers to use the data in their efforts to estimate earthquakes where they have not yet occurred. Several methods have been proposed over time to utilize the earthquake data and estimate slope displacements. A pioneer in the development of methods to estimate slope displacements, Nathan Newmark, proposed what is now called the Newmark sliding block method. This method explained in very simple ways how a mass, in this case a rigid block, would slide over an incline given that the acceleration of the block surpassed the frictional resistance created between the bottom of the block and the surface of the incline. Because many of the assumptions from this method were criticized by scientists over time, modified Newmark sliding block methods were proposed. As the original and modified Newmark sliding block methods were introduced, the need to account for the uncertainty in the way soil would behave under earthquake loading became a big challenge. Deterministic and probabilistic methods have been used to incorporate parameters that would account for some of the uncertainty in the analysis. In an attempt to use a probabilistic approach in understanding how slopes might fail, the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center proposed a performance-based earthquake engineering framework that would allow decision-makers to use probabilistically generated information to make decisions based on acceptable risk. Previous researchers applied this framework to simplified Newmark sliding block models, but the approach is difficult for engineers to implement in practice because of the numerous probability calculations that are required. The work presented in this thesis provides a solution to the implementation of the performance-based approach by providing a simplified procedure for the performance-based determination of seismic slope displacements using the Rathje & Saygili (2009) and the Bray and Travasarou (2007) simplified Newmark sliding block models. This document also includes hazard parameter maps, which are an important part of the simplified procedure, for five states in the United States. A validation of the method is provided, as well as a comparison of the simplified method against other commonly used approaches such as deterministic and pseudo-probabilistic.

Concrete filled steel tubes are regarded as ideal frame members in seismic resisting systems, as they combine large axial and flexural capacity with ductility. The combination of the two materials increases the strength of the confined concrete and avoids premature local buckling of the steel tube. These benefits are more prominent for circular than for rectangular concrete filled steel tubes. However, most common connection configurations for circular concrete filled tubes are not economic in the US market due to (a) the desire of designers to use only fully restrained connections and its associated (b) high cost of fabrication and field welding. Research indicates that well designed partially restrained connections can supply equal or even better cyclic behavior. Partially restrained connections also possess potential capability to develop self-centering system, which has many merits in seismic design. The goal of this research is to develop a new connection configuration between circular concrete filled steel columns and conventional W steel beams. The new connection configuration is intended to provide another option for rapid assembling on site with low erection costs. The proposed connection is based on an extended stiffened end plate that utilizes through rods. The rods are a combination of conventional steel and shape memory alloy that provide both energy dissipation and self-centering capacity. The new connection configuration should be workable for large beam sizes and can be easily expanded to a biaxial bending moment connection. / Ph. D.

El Perú está ubicado en la franja del cinturón de fuego donde han sucedido más del 80% de sismos de gran magnitud. Entre los sismos más relevantes se tuvo en abril del 2016 en Manta Ecuador y el de Concepción Chile en febrero del 2010 donde colapsaron edificaciones de varios niveles ocasionando 602 y 525 muertes respectivamente. Por lo tanto, es de mucha importancia implementar sistemas de protección sísmica a las edificaciones para disipar la energía ante un evento sísmico moderado a severo y salvaguardar la vida de sus ocupantes. Teniendo en cuenta ello en la presente investigación se hace una comparación entre un sistema convencional y otro implementado con disipadores de fluido viscoso Chevron (DFVC) en un edificio de gran altura en la ciudad de Chiclayo. Como primer paso de la metodología se hizo la caracterización del sitio a través del ensayo de penetración estándar (SPT), estudios geofísicos de refracción sísmica (RS) y análisis multicanal de ondas superficiales (MASW). Posteriormente se realizó el modelado y análisis dinámico modal espectral (ADME) según la norma E.030 para la estructura convencional y el análisis tiempo historia no lineal (ATHNL) para la estructura implementada con DFVC con la Norma ASCE7-16. Como resultados se determinó un suelo S₂, los desplazamientos de la estructura con DFVC se redujeron en 66.66 % y 56.46 % estos disipadores absorben un 60.38 % y 61.26 % de la energía del sismo en dirección X-X e Y-Y respectivamente. / Peru is located in the belt of fire where more than 80% of large earthquakes have occurred. Among the most relevant earthquakes were in April 2016 in Manta Ecuador and Concepción Chile in February 2010 where multi-level buildings collapsed, causing 602 and 525 deaths respectively. Therefore, it is very important to implement seismic protection systems in buildings to dissipate energy in the event of a moderate to severe seismic event and save the lives of its occupants. Taking this into account, in the present investigation, a comparison is made between a conventional system and another implementation with Chevron viscous fluid dissipators (DFVC) in a high-rise building in the city of Chiclayo. As the first step of the methodology, the characterization of the site was carried out through the standard (SPT) penetration test, geophysical studies of seismic refraction (RS) and multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW). Subsequently, spectral modal dynamic modeling and analysis (ADME) was carried out according to the E.030 standard for the conventional structure and the nonlinear time history analysis (ATHNL) for the structure implemented with DFVC with the ASCE7-16 Standard. As a result, a floor S₂ is calculated, the displacements of the structure with DFVC were reduced by 66.66% and 56.46% these dissipators absorbed 60.38% and 61.26% of the earthquake energy in the X-X and Y-Y direction respectively.es el resumen traducido al idioma inglés.

No description available.

No description available.

<div>Underground structures must be able to support static overburden loads, as well as to accommodate additional deformations imposed by seismic motions. Progress has been made in the last few years in understanding the soil-structure interaction mechanisms and the stress and displacement transfer from the ground to the structure during a seismic event. It seems well established that, for most tunnels, the most critical demand to the structure is caused by shear waves traveling perpendicular to the tunnel axis. Those waves cause distortions of the cross section (ovaling for a circular tunnel, and racking for a rectangular tunnel) that result in axial forces (thrusts) and bending moments. While all this has been well-studied for structures placed in linear-elastic ground, there is little information regarding the behavior of buried structures placed in nonlinear ground, especially under undrained conditions, i.e., when excess pore pressures generate and accumulate during the earthquake.</div><div><br></div><div><div>Two-dimensional dynamic numerical analyses are conducted to assess the seismic response of deep circular tunnels located far from the seismic source, under drained or undrained loading conditions. It is assumed that the liner remains elastic and that plane strain conditions apply. </div><div> A new cyclic nonlinear elastoplastic constitutive model is developed and verified, to simulate the nonlinear behavior and excess pore pressures accumulation with cycles of loading in the ground. The results of the numerical analyses show negligible effect of input frequencies on the normalized distortions of a tunnel for input frequencies smaller than 5 Hz (the distortions of the tunnel are normalized with respect to those of the free field); that is, for ratios between the wavelength of the seismic input and the tunnel opening larger than about eight to ten. The results also show that undrained conditions, compared with drained conditions, tend to reduce deformations for flexible liners and increase them for stiffer tunnels, when no accumulation of pore pressures with cycles of loading is assumed. However, when pore pressures increase with the number of cycles, the differences in distortions between drained and undrained loading are reduced, i.e., the normalized distortions increase for flexible and decrease for stiff tunnels, compared to those with drained conditions. </div></div><div><br></div><div><div>Undrained loading produces larger thrust in the liner than drained loading for stiff tunnels with flexibility ratio F ≤ 2.0.</div><div>For more flexible tunnels with F > 2.0, the behavior is the opposite, i.e., smaller axial forces are obtained for undrained loading than for drained loading. Including excess pore pressure accumulation does not introduce significant changes in the axial forces of the liner, irrespective of the flexibility of the tunnel, compared to those obtained from undrained loading without pore pressure accumulation.</div><div>The drainage loading condition (drained or undrained) or the magnitude of the free-field excess pore pressures during undrained loading do not affect the normalized bending moments for flexible tunnels, with F ≥ 2. For stiffer tunnels, with F < 2, the normalized bending moments increase from drained to undrained loading, and with the free field excess pore pressures.</div></div><div><br></div><div><div>It is found that the tunnel’s response is determined by the load on the liner, or by the distortions of the cross section, depending on the flexibility ratio. For stiff structures, with F ≤ 2.0, important axial forces and bending moments are produced in the structure, with larger magnitudes for the undrained case; while the distortions of the cross section are very small. When the tunnel becomes more flexible, the loading on the liner decreases, but the distortions of the cross section start to be important. For flexible structures with initial F ≥ 10 (for the cases investigated), the performance is largely determined by the distortions of the cross section, while the axial forces and bending moments are almost negligible. Such distortions are drastically affected by the drainage loading condition and by the magnitude of pore pressures in the free field. </div></div><div><br></div>

The recent 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami served as a stark reminder of the destructive capabilities of such combined events. Civil Engineers are increasingly tasked with protecting coastal populations and infrastructure against more severe multi-hazard events. Whilst the protective measures must be robust, their deployment over long stretches of coastline necessitates an economical and environmentally friendly design. The dual row retaining wall concept, which features two parallel sheet pile walls with a sand infill between them and tie rods connecting the wall heads, is potentially an efficient and resilient system in the face of both earthquake and tsunami loading. Optimal use of the soil's strength and stiffness as part of the structural system is an elegant geotechnical solution which could also be applied to harbours or elevated roads. However, both the static equilibrium and dynamic response of these types of constructions are not well understood and raise many academic and practical challenges. A combination of centrifuge and numerical modelling was utilised to investigate the problem. Studying the mechanics of the walls in dry sand from the soil stresses to the system displacements revealed the complex nature of the soil structure interaction. Increased wall flexibility can allow more utilisation of the soil's plastic capacity without necessarily increasing the total displacements. Recognising the dynamically varying vertical effective stresses promotes a purer understanding of the earth pressures mobilised around the walls and may encourage a move away from historically used dynamic earth pressure coefficients. In a similar vein, the proposed modified Winkler method can form the basis of an efficient preliminary design tool for practice with a reduced disconnect between the wall movements and mobilised soil stresses. When founded in liquefiable soil and subjected to harmonic base motion, the dual row walls were resilient to catastrophic collapse and only accrued deformation in a ratcheting fashion. The experiments and numerical simulations highlighted the importance of relative suction between the walls, shear-induced dilation and regained strength outside the walls and partial drainage in the co-seismic period. The use of surrogate modelling to automatically optimise parameter selection for the advanced constitutive model was successfully explored. Ultimately, focussing on the mechanics of the dual row walls has helped further the academic and practical understanding of these complex but life-saving systems.

L’ambition de ce travail est la prédiction du champ d’onde incident réalistique, induit par des mouvement forts de sol, aux sites d’importance stratégique, comme des centrales nucléaires. À cette fin, un plateforme multi-outil est développé et exploité pour simuler les aspects différents d’un phénomène complexe et multi-échelle comme un tremblement de terre. Ce cadre computationnel fait face à la nature diversifiée d’un tremblement de terre par approche holistique local-régionale.Un cas d’étude complexe est choisie: le tremblement de terre MW6.6 Niigata-Ken Ch¯uetsu-Oki, qui a endommagé la centrale nucléaire de Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. Les effets de site non-linéaires observés sont à premier examinés et caractérisés. Dans la suite, le modèle 3D «de la faille au site» est construit et employé pour prédire le mouvement sismique dans une bande de fréquence de 0-7 Hz. L’effet de la structure géologique pliée au-dessous du site est quantifié en simulant deux chocs d’intensité modérée et en évaluant la variabilité spatiale des spectres de réponse aux différents endroits dans le site nucléaire. Le résultat numérique souligne le besoin d’une description plus détaillée du champ d’onde incident utilisé comme paramètre d’entrée dans la conception structurel antisismique de réacteurs nucléaires et des installations. Finalement, la bande de fréquences des signaux synthétiques obtenues comme résultat des simulations numériques est agrandie en exploitant la prédiction stochastique des ordonnées spectrales à courte période fournies par des Réseaux Artificiels de Neurones. / The ambition of this work is the prediction of a synthetic yet realistic broad-band incident wave-field, induced by strong ground motion earthquakes at sites of strategic importance, such as nuclear power plants. To this end, an multi-tool platform is developed and exploited to simulate the different aspects of the complex and multi-scale phenomenon an earthquake embodies. This multi-scale computational framework copes with the manifold nature of an earthquake by a holistic local-to-regional approach. A complex case study is chosen to this end: is the MW6.6 Niigata-Ken Ch¯uetsu-Oki earthquake, which damaged the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. The observed non-linear site-effects are at first investigated and characterized. In the following, the 3D source-to-site model is constructed and employed to provide reliable input ground motion, for a frequency band of 0-7 Hz. The effect of the folded geological structure underneath the site is quantified by simulating two aftershocks of moderate intensity and by estimating the spatial variability of the response spectra at different locations within the nuclear site. The numerical outcome stresses the need for a more detailed description of the incident wave-field used as input parameter in the antiseismic structural design of nuclear reactors and facilities. Finally, the frequency band of the time-histories obtained as outcome of the numerical simulations is enlarged by exploiting the stochastic prediction of short-period response ordinates provided by Artificial Neural Networks.

Trabalho de investigação desenvolvido na Universidade de Tecnologia e Economia de Budapeste / Tese de mestrado. Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia Civil - Especialização em Estruturas. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2012

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) seismic bridge design process for an Ordinary Bridge described in the Seismic Design Criteria (SDC) directs the design engineer to meet minimum requirements resulting in the design of a bridge that should remain standing in the event of a Design Seismic Hazard. A bridge can be designed to sustain significant damage; however it should avoid the collapse limit state, where the bridge is unable to resist loads due to self-weight. Seismic hazards, in the form of a design spectrum or ground motion time histories, are used to determine the demands of the bridge components and bridge system. These demands are compared to the capacity of the components to ensure that the bridge meets key performance criteria. The SDC also specifies design detailing of various components, including abutments, foundations, hinge seats and bent caps. The expectation of following the guidelines set forth by the SDC during the design process is that the resulting bridge design will avoid collapse under anticipated seismic loads. While the code provisions provide different analyses to follow and component detailing to adhere to in order to ensure a proper bridge design, the SDC does not provide a way to quantitatively determine whether the bridge design has met the requirement of no-collapse. The objectives of this research are to introduce probabilistic fragility analysis into the Caltrans design process and address the gap of information in the current design process, namely the determination of whether the bridge design meets the performance criteria of no-collapse at the design hazard level. The motivation for this project is to improve the designer's understanding of the probabilistic performance of their bridge design as a function of important design details. To accomplish these goals, a new bridge fragility method is presented as well as a design support tool that provides design engineers with instant access to fragility information during the design process. These products were developed for one specific bridge type that is common in California, the two-span concrete box girder bridge. The end product, the design support tool, is a bridge-specific fragility generator that provides probabilistic performance information on the bridge design. With this tool, a designer can check the bridge design, after going through the SDC design process, to determine the performance of the bridge and its components at any hazard level. The design support tool can provide the user with the probability of failure or collapse for the specific bridge design, which will give insight to the user about whether the bridge design has achieved the performance objective set out in the SDC. The designer would also be able to determine the effect of a change in various design details on the performance and therefore make more informed design decisions.