Input and system identification of the Hualien soil–structure interaction system using earthquake response data

This paper presents an input and system identification technique for a soil–structure interaction system using earthquake response data. Identification is carried out on the Hualien large‐scale seismic test structure, which was built in Taiwan for international joint research. The identified quantities are the input ground acceleration as well as the shear wave velocities of the near‐field soil regions and Young's moduli of the shell sections of the structure. The earthquake response analysis on the soil–structure interaction system is carried out using the finite element method incorporating the infinite element formulation for the unbounded layered soil medium and the substructured wave input technique. The criterion function for the parameter estimation is constructed using the frequency response amplitude ratios of the earthquake responses measured at several points of the structure, so that the information on the input motion may be excluded. The constrained steepest descent method is employed to obtain the revised parameters. The simulated earthquake responses using the identified parameters and input ground motion show excellent agreement with the measured responses. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seismic directional random noise suppression by radial‐trace time–frequency peak filtering using the Hurst exponent statistic

Radial‐trace time–frequency peak filtering filters a seismic record along the radial‐trace direction rather than the conventional channel direction. It takes the spatial correlation of the reflected events between adjacent channels into account. Thus, radial‐trace time–frequency peak filtering performs well in denoising and enhancing the continuity of reflected events. However, in the seismic record there is often random noise whose energy is concentrated in certain directions; the noise in these directions is correlative. We refer to this kind of random noise (that is distributed randomly in time but correlative in the space) as directional random noise. Under radial‐trace time–frequency peak filtering, the directional random noise will be treated as signal and enhanced when this noise has same direction as the signal. Therefore, we need to identify the directional random noise before the filtering. In this paper, we test the linearity of signal and directional random noise in time using the Hurst exponent. The time series of signals with high linearity lead to large Hurst exponent value; however, directional random noise is a random series in time without a fixed waveform and thus its linearity is low; therefore, we can differentiate the signal and directional random noise by the Hurst exponent values. The directional random noise can then be suppressed by using a long filtering window length during the radial‐trace time–frequency peak filtering. Synthetic and real data examples show that the proposed method can remove most directional random noise and can effectively recover the reflected events.     

Seismic response of a bridge–soil–foundation system under the combined effect of vertical and horizontal ground motions

Different levels of model sophistication have recently emerged to support seismic risk assessment of bridges, but mostly at the expense of neglecting the influence of vertical ground motions (VGMs). In this paper, the influence of VGMs on bridge seismic response is presented and the results are compared with the case of horizontal‐only excitations. An advanced finite element model that accounts for VGMs is first developed. Then, to investigate the effect of soil–structure interaction (SSI) including liquefaction potential, the same bridge with soil‐foundation and fixed boundary conditions is also analyzed. Results show that the inclusion of the VGMs has a significant influence on the seismic response, especially for the axial force in columns, normal force of bearings, and the vertical deck bending moments. However, VGMs do not have as much influence on the seismic demand of the pile cap displacements or pile maximum axial forces. Also, the significant fluctuation of the column axial force can reduce its shear and flexural capacity, and a heightened reversal of flexural effects may induce damage in the deck. In addition, relative to the fixed base case, SSI effects tend to reduce response quantities for certain ground motions while increasing demands for others. This phenomenon is explained as a function of the frequency content of the ground motions, the shift in natural vertical periods, and the VGM spectral accelerations at higher modes. Moreover, the mechanisms of liquefaction are isolated relative to SSI effects in nonliquefiable soils, revealing the influence of liquefaction on bridge response under VGMs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic soil–structure interaction effects on the seismic response of suspension bridges

A stochastic approach has been formulated for the linear analysis of suspension bridges subjected to earthquake excitations. The transfer functions of various responses have been formulated while including the effects of dynamic Soil–Structure Interaction (SSI) via the use of the fixed-base modes of the structure. The excitation has been characterized by the ‘equivalent stationary’ processes corresponding to the free-field motions at each support and by an assumed coherency function between these motions. The proposed formulation considers the non-stationarity in the structural response due to sudden application of excitation by considering (i) the time-dependent frequency response functions, and (ii) the order statistics formulation for the peak factors in evolutionary response processes. The formulation has been illustrated by analysing the seismic response of the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco for two example excitations conforming to USNRC-specified design spectra. The significance of various governing parameters on the dynamic soil–structure interaction effects on the seismic response of suspension bridges has also been studied. It has been found that the contribution of the vertical component of ground motion to the bridge response increases with increasing soil compliance. Also, the extent to which the spatial variation of ground motion affects the bridge response depends on how significant the SSI effects are. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Earthquake damage detection in the Imperial County Services Building I: The data and time–frequency analysis

The former Imperial County Services Building was a six-story reinforced concrete structure in the El Centro, California, severely damaged by the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake. It represents a rare case of an instrumented building that has been damaged, and thus can serve as a full-scale benchmark to evaluate and further develop structural health monitoring methods. This paper presents an analysis of inter-story drifts, and of changes in the first NS and EW system frequencies (estimated from the ridge of the Gabor transform of the relative roof displacement response) as indicators of the occurrence of damage. The detected initial decreases of system frequency, of about 28% for NS and 24% for EW motions, are not believed to be due to severe damage. The subsequent decreases, of about 44% for NS and 21% for EW motions, are attributed to damage. Near the end of shaking, increases of about 35% for the NS and 36% for EW motions were detected. (These percentage changes were computed with respect to the previous value for particular interval, rather than a fixed reference). During the most severe shaking, the inter-story drifts exceeded 0.5% for NS and 1.5% for EW motions.     

Influence of dynamic soil–structure interaction on the nonlinear response and seismic reliability of multistorey systems

A set of reinforced concrete structures with gravitational loads and mechanical properties (strength and stiffness) representative of systems designed for earthquake resistance in accordance with current criteria and methods is selected to study the influence of dynamic soil–structure interaction on seismic response, ductility demands and reliability levels. The buildings are considered located at soft soil sites in the Valley of Mexico and subjected to ground motion time histories simulated in accordance with characteristic parameters of the maximum probable earthquake likely to occur during the system's expected life. For the near‐resonance condition the effects of soil–structure interaction on the ductility demands depend mainly on radiation damping. According to the geometry of the structures studied this damping is strongly correlated with the aspect ratio, obtained by dividing the building height by its width. In this way, for structures with aspect ratio greater than 1.4 the storey and global ductility demands increase with respect to those obtained with the same structures but on rigid base, while for structures with aspect ratio less than 1.4 the ductility demands decrease with respect to those for the structures on rigid base. For the cases when the fundamental period of the structure has values very different from the dominant ground period, soil–structure interaction leads in all cases to a reduction of the ductility demands, independently of the aspect ratio. The reliability index β is obtained as a function of the base shear ratio and of the seismic intensity acting on the nonlinear systems subjected to the simulated motions. The resulting reliability functions are very similar for systems on rigid or on flexible foundation, provided that in the latter case the base rotation and the lateral displacement are removed from the total response of the system. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.