Seismic Response of a Tall Building to Recorded and Simulated Ground Motions

Seismological modeling technologies are advancing to the stage of enabling fundamental simulation of earthquake fault ruptures, which offer new opportunities to simulate extreme ground motions for collapse safety assessment and earthquake scenarios for community resilience studies. With the goal toward establishing the reliability of simulated ground motions for performance-based engineering, this paper examines the response of a 20-story concrete moment frame building analyzed by nonlinear dynamic analysis under corresponding sets of recorded and simulated ground motions. The simulated ground motions were obtained through a larger validation study via the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Broadband Platform (BBP) that simulates magnitude 5.9 to 7.3 earthquakes. Spectral shape and significant duration are considered when selecting ground motions in the development of comparable sets of simulated and recorded ground motions. Structural response is examined at different intensity levels up to collapse, to investigate whether a statistically significant difference exists between the responses to simulated and recorded ground motions. Results indicate that responses to simulated and recorded ground motions are generally similar at intensity levels prior to observation of collapses. Collapse capacities are also in good agreement for this structure. However, when the structure was made more sensitive to effects of ground motion duration, the differences between observed collapse responses increased. Research is ongoing to illuminate reasons for the difference and whether there is a systematic bias in the results that can be traced back to the ground motion simulation techniques

Root-Mean-Square Dipole Moment and Neutron Scattering Function of 18-Crown-6 in Cyclohexane: Comparison of Three Potential Models

Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed in order to study the effect of a new charge density distribution for 18-crown-6, recently described in the literature [J. Mol. Struct. (THEOCHEM) 1994, 305, 2491, on different properties of the crown ether. Comparisons are made with results discussed in a previous paper where other potential models were employed. Remarkable shifts in the spectrum of conformations are observed, and for the first time an average dipole moment is calculated that is in good agreement with experiment. We have calculated neutron scattering cross sections and X-ray intensities for two potential models. Of these, only the neutron scattering cross section turned out to be sensitive to the differences in the structures resulting from these potentials

Are joint torque models limited by an assumption of monoarticularity?

This study determines whether maximal voluntary ankle plantar flexor torque could be more accurately represented using a torque generator that is a function of both knee and ankle kinematics. Iso velocity and isometric ankle plantar flexor torques were measured on a single participant for knee joint angles of 111° to 169° (approximately full extension) using a Contrex M J dynamometer. Maximal voluntary torque was represented by a 19-parameter two-joint function of ankle and knee joint angles and angular velocities with the parameters determined by minimizing a weighted root mean square difference between measured torques and the two-joint function. The weighted root mean square difference between the two-joint function and the measured torques was 10 N-m or 3% of maximum torque. The two-joint function was a more accurate representation of maximal voluntary ankle plantar flexor torques than an existing single-joint function where differences of 19% of maximum torque were found. It is concluded that when the knee is flexed by more than 40°, a two-joint representation is necessary

Dielectric Constant and Structure of Liquid 18-Crown-6 Calculated from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The results are presented for molecular dynamics simulations of liquid 18-crown-6 using different potential models. The results offer the possibility of investigating the influence of the flexibility of the dihedral angles and the effects of the united atom approach. The radial distribution functions and the correlation between the molecular separations and relative orientations are found to be rather insensitive to the specific potential model used. The relation between orientation correlations and dipole−dipole correlations on the other hand is found to be very sensitive to the flexibility of the molecule. The contributions of the dipole−dipole correlations to the dielectric constant are found to be small compared to those of the molecular dipoles. The calculated dielectric constants are very much in disagreement with the experimental one. It is believed that adding electronic polarization terms to the potential models will very much enhance the contributions of the dipole−dipole correlations to the dielectric constant without necessarily changing the molecular and structural properties