Hospitals are regarded as some of the most important structures in society due to the service that they provide. Knowing this, governments spend large amounts of money on these facilities. Also, codes of design require to provide them more reserve capacity than that for conventional structures. However, large damages (such as collapses and permanent or temporary interruptions of their functionality) have still been observed in hospitals during strong earthquakes. Unfortunately, it is precisely after this type of event that their service is in high demand and failure in providing that service could lead to further disastrous or fatal consequences. Therefore, the use of protective technologies, combined with rational procedures of design, would help to reduce damage and probable losses of functionality in hospital structures. In this thesis, a procedure for seismic design of structures equipped with a type of protective technology, namely, buckling-restrained braces (BRBs), is proposed. Then, the results of experimental and numerical studies are presented to understand the benefits of using BRBs in structures. This study highlights that BRBs are very effective to dissipate seismic energy and can act as structural fuses, i.e. disposable devices that may be replaced after an earthquake without interruptions in the functionality of the structure. One of the advantages of the proposed procedure is that it takes into account explicitly the characteristics and contributions of both, the main structure and the BRBs. It is based on the assumption that a structure protected with BRBs can rationally be represented by a dual SDOF system whose parts yield at different displacement levels. Other advantages include: 1) better control of the displacement demands on the structure; 2) achievement of the fuse concept beforehand; and 3) rapid assessment of the probabilistic performance of the structure. The experimental studies consisted of testing steel and concrete models, with and without BRBs, on a shaking table. In addition to calibrate and validate the proposed method of design, the tests have helped to find that, due to BRBs: 1) the damping ratio is increased significantly; and 2) the dynamic response, to ground motions characteristic of the lakebed zone of Mexico City, is reduced in terms of lateral displacements, inter-storey drifts, floor velocities and floor accelerations. The numerical studies are: 1) a study of the response of typical hospitals improved with BRBs; 2) a study of residual displacements in conventional and dual systems; and 3) evaluation of the economic benefits of using BRBs in structures. On these studies, hypothetical hospitals located in the lakebed zone of Mexico City were considered. The results show that the use of BRBs is very beneficial in medium- and low-rise buildings, while adverse effects may be observed in high-rise structures.

Liquefaction is a phenomenon in which soil loses a large percentage of its shear resistance due to increased pore water pressure and flows like a liquid. Undrained cyclic loading conditions during earthquakes cause liquefaction of soils, which can lead to catastrophic failures such as bearing capacity failures, slope failures and lateral spreads. The concepts and mechanisms of liquefaction were studied extensively by many researchers. Though the factors affecting the liquefaction response of soils during earthquakes are well documented in literature, there are still some gray areas in understanding the individual and combined effects of factors like frequency, gradation, fines content and surcharge pressure on the initiation of liquefaction. The objective of this thesis is to study the influence of ground motion, soil and site parameters on the initiation of liquefaction in saturated sand beds through laboratory shaking table model tests and numerical studies. Shaking table tests are carried out using a uniaxial shaking table on sand beds of 600 mm thickness. The initiation of liquefaction was observed and identified by measuring the pore water pressure developed during the sinusoidal cyclic loading. Free field liquefaction studies are carried out on sand beds to study the influence of ground motion parameters, namely, input acceleration and frequency of shaking on liquefaction. These studies revealed that acceleration is one of the important parameters that can affect the initiation of liquefaction in sands. Increase in acceleration reduces the liquefaction resistance of sand and a small increase in acceleration can trigger liquefaction. Frequency of shaking did not affect the initiation of liquefaction at lower frequencies but a threshold frequency which triggered instant increase in the excess pore pressures is observed. Liquefaction caused slight initial amplification followed by de-amplification of accelerations due to the stiffness reduction in soils during liquefaction, the effect being more pronounced in the top layers of the sand bed. Pore water pressure ratios during dynamic loading decreased with depth below the surface of the sand bed due to the low initial effective vertical stress and upward transmission of pore pressure during undrained loading. Shaking table tests are carried out to study the influence of soil parameters such as relative density, thickness of dry overlying sand layer and gradation. Relative density of sand can influence the liquefaction potential of sand to a great extent, about 10% increase in relative density bringing down the probability of liquefaction by about 50%. With the increase in height of dry overlying sand layer, liquefaction potential has decreased nonlinearly. Change in grain size altered the pattern of liquefaction and pore pressure development and it is observed that the liquefaction in finer sands is influenced by the frequency of shaking to a larger extent. Surcharge pressure from building loads increased the liquefaction potential and heavier structures got liquefied at lower pore water pressure ratios. Significant post-liquefaction de-amplification was observed in sand beds with surcharge pressure. Parametric numerical analyses are carried out using finite difference program FLAC (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua) with FINN model to measure pore water pressures in the sand bed. Results from numerical analyses with change in the acceleration, surcharge pressure and thickness of dry overlying layer agreed well with the experimental results. However, effect of frequency in numerical studies did not match with the experimental observations, because of the inherent boundary effects in the experimental models. Results from this thesis provided important insights into the development of pore water pressures in sand beds during cyclic loading events, apart from enhancing the understanding towards the effect of various ground motion, site and soil parameters on the initiation of liquefaction in sand beds.

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Use of soil retaining walls for roads, embankments and bridges is increasing with time and reinforced soil retaining walls are found to be very efficient even under critical conditions compared to unreinforced walls. They offer competitive solutions to earth retaining problems associated with less space and more loads posed by tremendous growth in infrastructure, in addition to the advantages in ease and cost of construction compared to conventional retaining wall systems. The study of seismic performance of reinforced soil retaining walls is receiving much attention in the light of lessons learned from past failures of conventional retaining walls. Laboratory model studies on these walls under controlled seismic loading conditions help to understand better how these walls actually behave during earthquakes. The objective of the present study is to investigate the seismic response of geosynthetic reinforced soil wall models through shaking table tests. To achieve this, wrap faced and rigid faced reinforced soil retaining walls of size 750 × 500 mm in plan and 600 mm height are built in rigid and flexible containers and tested under controlled dynamic conditions using a uni-axial shaking table. The effects of frequency and acceleration of the base motion, surcharge pressure on the crest, number of reinforcing layers, container boundary, wall structure and reinforcement layout on the seismic performance of the retaining walls are studied through systematic series of shaking table tests. Results are analyzed to understand the effect of each of the considered parameters on the face displacements, acceleration amplifications and soil pressures on facing at different elevations of the walls. A numerical model is developed to simulate the shaking table tests on wrap faced reinforced soil walls using a computer program FLAC (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua). The experimental data are used to validate the numerical model and parametric studies are carried out on 6 m height full-scale wall using this model. Thus, the study deals with the shaking table tests, dynamic response of reinforced walls and their numerical simulation. The thesis presents detailed description of various features and various parts of the shaking table facility along with the instrumentation and model containers. Methodology adopted for the construction of reinforced soil model walls and testing procedures are briefly described. Scaling and stability issues related to the model wall size and reinforcement strength are also discussed. From the study, it is observed that the displacements are decreasing with the increase in relative density of backfill, increase in surcharge pressure and increase in number of reinforcing layers; In general, accelerations are amplified to the most at the top of the wall; Behaviour of model walls is sensitive to model container boundary. The frequency content is very important parameter affecting the model response. Further, it is noticed that the face displacements are significantly affected by all of the above parameters, while the accelerations are less sensitive to reinforcement parameters. Even very low strength geonet and geotextile are able to reduce the displacements by 75% compared to unreinforced wall. The strain levels in the reinforcing elements are observed to be very low, in the order of ±150 micro strains. A random dynamic event is also used in one of the model tests and the resulted accelerations and displacements are presented. Numerical parametric studies provided important insight into the behaviour of wrap faced walls under various seismic loading conditions and variation in physical parameters.

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