Earthquake Accelerogram Selection and Scaling Procedures for Estimating the Distribution of Drift Response

The problem of selecting a suite of earthquake accelerograms for time-domain analyses is of particular practical and academic interest. Research in this field has led to numerous approaches for compiling suites of accelerograms that may be used to robustly estimate the median structural response. However, many applications in earthquake engineering require the estimation of the full distribution of a structural response parameter for a particular predefined scenario. This article presents an efficient procedure whereby the distributions of interstory or roof drifts may be well approximated. The procedure makes use of three-point approximations to continuous distributions and the strong correlation that exists between the spectral acceleration at the initial fundamental period of the structure and the drift response. The distributions obtained under the proposed approach are compared with a reference distribution assumed to represent the true underlying distribution of drift response. The reference distribution is defined through a regression analysis conducted on the results of time-domain analyses of a six-story reinforced-concrete frame building subjected to 1,666 unsealed natural accelerograms. The results indicate that robust estimates of the first and second moments of the distribution of logarithmic drift may be obtained by subjecting the structure to several accelerograms scaled to match three target spectra over a range of periods. The target spectra are defined by the numbers of standard deviations above or below the median 5%-damped spectral acceleration and correspond to the roots of a third-order Hermite polynomial. The results demonstrate that consideration of fifth-order Hermite polynomials does not lead to a significantly improved performance of the approac

Variability and uncertainty in empirical ground-motion prediction for probabilistic hazard and risk analyses

© The Author(s) 2015.The terms aleatory variability and epistemic uncertainty mean different things to people who routinely use them within the fields of seismic hazard and risk analysis. This state is not helped by the repetition of loosely framed generic definitions that actually inaccurate. The present paper takes a closer look at the components of total uncertainty that contribute to ground-motion modelling in hazard and risk applications. The sources and nature of uncertainty are discussed and it is shown that the common approach to deciding what should be included within hazard and risk integrals and what should be pushed into logic tree formulations warrants reconsideration. In addition, it is shown that current approaches to the generation of random fields of ground motions for spatial risk analyses are incorrect and a more appropriate framework is presented

Serviceability response of a bench-mark cable-stayed footbridge: comparison of available methods

In previous Footbridge Conferences, the focus of researchers has been on the representation of pedestrian actions (vertical and lateral) to design footbridges, on the proposal of methodologies for the analysis in service of these structures and on the description of the serviceability response of particular footbridges. Nonetheless, none of these research works have been focused on the magnitude of the serviceability response of footbridges according to its structural type. This paper characterises the response of footbridges with stayed cables as main structural type. Based on a compiled dataset of cable-stayed footbridges (developed for this research work), the paper presents the geometrical and structural characteristics of a footbridge that can be regarded as representative of this structural type. Considering the best methodologies available for the assessment of its response in vertical and lateral direction, the paper describes the magnitude of the serviceability performance of this bridge under a wide range of pedestrian scenarios. This description familiarises designers at early stages of their design with the order of magnitude of the serviceability response of cable-stayed footbridges with an arrangement similar to that commonly used for this structural type

Serviceability limit state of vibrations in under-deck cable-stayed bridges accounting for vehicle-structure interaction

Verification of the serviceability limit state of vibrations due to traffic live loads can be neglected in conventional types of concrete road bridges but becomes critical in the design of slender structures like under-deck cable-stayed bridges. The novelty of the work presented in this article is that an innovative vehicle-bridge interaction model is employed, in which realistic wheel dimensions of heavy trucks, road roughness profiles and the cross slope of the road are considered in nonlinear dynamic analyses of detailed three-dimensional finite element models. An extensive parametric study is conducted to explore the influence of the bridge parameters such as the longitudinal and transverse cable arrangement and the support conditions, in addition to the load modelling, road quality, the wheel size, the transverse road slope and the vehicle position and speed on the response of under-deck cable-stayed bridges. It has been observed that the vibrations perceived by pedestrians can be effectively reduced by concentrating the cable-system below the deck at the bridge centreline. The Fourier amplitude spectrum of the acceleration at critical positions along the deck proved that the response of under-deck cable-stayed bridges is not dominated only by contributions at the fundamental mode and, consequently, the conventional deflection-based methods are not valid to assess the users comfort. Instead, Vehicle-Bridge Interaction analyses are recommended for detailed design, considering the wheel dimensions if the pavement quality is bad and/or if the wheel radius is large. Finally, we verify through multiple approaches that the comfort of pedestrian users is more critical than that of vehicle users. However, the comfort of vehicle users is shown to be significantly affected when the road quality is poor