62 research outputs found

    High-fidelity inelastic post-buckling response for balanced design and performance improvement of X-braced moment resisting frames

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    In this paper, the nonlinear post buckling response of X-Braced Moment Resisting Frame (X-BMRF) systems are studied. The X-BMRF comprises of X-bracing diagonals attached to the moment frame by corner gusset plates to form the structural system acting as a dual frame. In common practice today, one of the X-bracing diagonal members is discontinuous, and a middle gusset plate is used to connect the diagonals to each other at the intersection. In this study, the effect of mid-connection details and different types sizes of corner gusset plate connection are well measured to evaluate behavioral characteristics of the above systems. An accurate and robust three-dimensional finite element modeling of the above systems validatedverified against available test data and numerical simulation are demonstrated. Then, a number of X-BMRFs are designed and analyzed under monotonic (and cyclic) loading(s), and later ductility values and energy dissipation ratios of such systems are appraised. The results are used to evaluate the secondary yield mechanisms, probable failure modes, and to quantify the loading share of story shear when different rigidity ratios between the X-bracing and moment frame systems are deliberated. Finally, the results can provide a suitable ground to present a new set of balanced design criteria which can improve nonlinear performance and assure maximum system ductility of such system

    Automatic Roof Type Classification Through Machine Learning for Regional Wind Risk Assessment

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    Roof type is one of the most critical building characteristics for wind vulnerability modeling. It is also the most frequently missing building feature from publicly available databases. An automatic roof classification framework is developed herein to generate high-resolution roof-type data using machine learning. A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) was trained to classify roof types using building-level satellite images. The model achieved an F1 score of 0.96 on predicting roof types for 1,000 test buildings. The CNN model was then used to predict roof types for 161,772 single-family houses in New Hanover County, NC, and Miami-Dade County, FL. The distribution of roof type in city and census tract scales was presented. A high variance was observed in the dominant roof type among census tracts. To improve the completeness of the roof-type data, imputation algorithms were developed to populate missing roof data due to low-quality images, using critical building attributes and neighborhood-level roof characteristics

    Effects of Near-Fault Ground Motions on Civil Infrastructure

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    Near-fault earthquakes (NFEs), characterized by high peak ground velocity (PGV) and long period pulses, show different properties from far-field ones. The input motions from NFEs are usually composed of a small number of sinusoidal large waves in addition to significant vertical components. These specific characteristics of NFEs strongly influence the seismic response of civil infrastructure and may reduce the effectiveness of the adopted protection devices

    A Data-Driven Approach for Granular Simulation of Potential Earthquake Damage to Bridge Networks and Resulting Decreases in Mobility

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    Quantified investigation of resilience in regional transportation networks has been a growing research focus. Despite this increased attention, state-of-the-art studies fall short of devising and utilizing explicit transportation network models where infrastructure components (roads, bridges, etc.) and travel behaviors of network users are modeled in high fidelity. This study presents a novel model-based approach that couples a semi-automated, image-based structure-specific bridge modeling method with a metropolis-scale travel demand model towards achieving a comprehensive and high-resolution resilience assessment. As a result of its data-driven approach, the proposed method is capable of capturing and incorporating many details that are usually omitted in traditional analyses, promising improved accuracy in estimating the resilience and sustainability metrics of transportation networks. As a small-scale testbed for the proposed approach, this study displays the results of a preliminary investigation of potential seismic losses for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area due to a hazard-consistent scenario earthquake primarily affecting the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. This analysis makes use of structure-specific fragility functions of 200 bridges in the vicinity of the port facilities, generated from street-level imagery, and provides a detailed picture of the expected disruptions to truck freight mobility resulting from the scenario event

    Centrifuge Testing of Circular and Rectangular Embedded Structures with Base Excitations

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    We present data and metadata from a centrifuge testing program that was designed to investigate the seismic responses of buried circular and rectangular culverts. The specimen configurations were based on Caltrans Standard Plans, and the scope of research was to compare the experimental findings with the design method described in the NCHRP Report 611 as well as to formulate preliminary recommendations for Caltrans practice. A relatively flexible pipe and a stiff box-shaped specimen embedded in dense sand were tested in the centrifuge at the Center for Geotechnical Modeling at University of California, Davis and were subjected to a set of broadband and harmonic input motions. Responses were recorded in the soil and in the embedded structures using a dense array of instruments. Measured quantities included specimen accelerations, bending strains, and hoop strains; soil accelerations, shear-wave velocities, settlements, and lateral displacements; and accelerations of the centrifuge's shaking table. This data paper describes the tests and summarizes the generated data, which are archived at DesignSafe.ci.org (DOI: 10.17603/DS2XW9R) and are accessible through an interactive Jupyter notebook

    An Assessment to Benchmark the Seismic Performance of a Code-Conforming Reinforced-Concrete Moment-Frame Building

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    This report describes a state-of-the-art performance-based earthquake engineering methodology that is used to assess the seismic performance of a four-story reinforced concrete (RC) office building that is generally representative of low-rise office buildings constructed in highly seismic regions of California. This “benchmark” building is considered to be located at a site in the Los Angeles basin, and it was designed with a ductile RC special moment-resisting frame as its seismic lateral system that was designed according to modern building codes and standards. The building’s performance is quantified in terms of structural behavior up to collapse, structural and nonstructural damage and associated repair costs, and the risk of fatalities and their associated economic costs. To account for different building configurations that may be designed in practice to meet requirements of building size and use, eight structural design alternatives are used in the performance assessments. Our performance assessments account for important sources of uncertainty in the ground motion hazard, the structural response, structural and nonstructural damage, repair costs, and life-safety risk. The ground motion hazard characterization employs a site-specific probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and the evaluation of controlling seismic sources (through disaggregation) at seven ground motion levels (encompassing return periods ranging from 7 to 2475 years). Innovative procedures for ground motion selection and scaling are used to develop acceleration time history suites corresponding to each of the seven ground motion levels. Structural modeling utilizes both “fiber” models and “plastic hinge” models. Structural modeling uncertainties are investigated through comparison of these two modeling approaches, and through variations in structural component modeling parameters (stiffness, deformation capacity, degradation, etc.). Structural and nonstructural damage (fragility) models are based on a combination of test data, observations from post-earthquake reconnaissance, and expert opinion. Structural damage and repair costs are modeled for the RC beams, columns, and slabcolumn connections. Damage and associated repair costs are considered for some nonstructural building components, including wallboard partitions, interior paint, exterior glazing, ceilings, sprinkler systems, and elevators. The risk of casualties and the associated economic costs are evaluated based on the risk of structural collapse, combined with recent models on earthquake fatalities in collapsed buildings and accepted economic modeling guidelines for the value of human life in loss and cost-benefit studies. The principal results of this work pertain to the building collapse risk, damage and repair cost, and life-safety risk. These are discussed successively as follows. When accounting for uncertainties in structural modeling and record-to-record variability (i.e., conditional on a specified ground shaking intensity), the structural collapse probabilities of the various designs range from 2% to 7% for earthquake ground motions that have a 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years (2475 years return period). When integrated with the ground motion hazard for the southern California site, the collapse probabilities result in mean annual frequencies of collapse in the range of [0.4 to 1.4]x10 -4 for the various benchmark building designs. In the development of these results, we made the following observations that are expected to be broadly applicable: (1) The ground motions selected for performance simulations must consider spectral shape (e.g., through use of the epsilon parameter) and should appropriately account for correlations between motions in both horizontal directions; (2) Lower-bound component models, which are commonly used in performance-based assessment procedures such as FEMA 356, can significantly bias collapse analysis results; it is more appropriate to use median component behavior, including all aspects of the component model (strength, stiffness, deformation capacity, cyclic deterioration, etc.); (3) Structural modeling uncertainties related to component deformation capacity and post-peak degrading stiffness can impact the variability of calculated collapse probabilities and mean annual rates to a similar degree as record-to-record variability of ground motions. Therefore, including the effects of such structural modeling uncertainties significantly increases the mean annual collapse rates. We found this increase to be roughly four to eight times relative to rates evaluated for the median structural model; (4) Nonlinear response analyses revealed at least six distinct collapse mechanisms, the most common of which was a story mechanism in the third story (differing from the multi-story mechanism predicted by nonlinear static pushover analysis); (5) Soil-foundation-structure interaction effects did not significantly affect the structural response, which was expected given the relatively flexible superstructure and stiff soils. The potential for financial loss is considerable. Overall, the calculated expected annual losses (EAL) are in the range of 52,000to52,000 to 97,000 for the various code-conforming benchmark building designs, or roughly 1% of the replacement cost of the building (8.8M).Theselossesaredominatedbytheexpectedrepaircostsofthewallboardpartitions(includinginteriorpaint)andbythestructuralmembers.Lossestimatesaresensitivetodetailsofthestructuralmodels,especiallytheinitialstiffnessofthestructuralelements.Lossesarealsofoundtobesensitivetostructuralmodelingchoices,suchasignoringthetensilestrengthoftheconcrete(40EAL)orthecontributionofthegravityframestooverallbuildingstiffnessandstrength(15changeinEAL).Althoughthereareanumberoffactorsidentifiedintheliteratureaslikelytoaffecttheriskofhumaninjuryduringseismicevents,thecasualtymodelinginthisstudyfocusesonthosefactors(buildingcollapse,buildingoccupancy,andspatiallocationofbuildingoccupants)thatdirectlyinformthebuildingdesignprocess.Theexpectedannualnumberoffatalitiesiscalculatedforthebenchmarkbuilding,assumingthatanearthquakecanoccuratanytimeofanydaywithequalprobabilityandusingfatalityprobabilitiesconditionedonstructuralcollapseandbasedonempiricaldata.Theexpectedannualnumberoffatalitiesforthecodeconformingbuildingsrangesbetween0.05102and0.21102,andisequalto2.30102foranoncodeconformingdesign.Theexpectedlossoflifeduringaseismiceventisperhapsthedecisionvariablethatownersandpolicymakerswillbemostinterestedinmitigating.Thefatalityestimationcarriedoutforthebenchmarkbuildingprovidesamethodologyforcomparingthisimportantvalueforvariousbuildingdesigns,andenablesinformeddecisionmakingduringthedesignprocess.Theexpectedannuallossassociatedwithfatalitiescausedbybuildingearthquakedamageisestimatedbyconvertingtheexpectedannualnumberoffatalitiesintoeconomicterms.Assumingthevalueofahumanlifeis8.8M). These losses are dominated by the expected repair costs of the wallboard partitions (including interior paint) and by the structural members. Loss estimates are sensitive to details of the structural models, especially the initial stiffness of the structural elements. Losses are also found to be sensitive to structural modeling choices, such as ignoring the tensile strength of the concrete (40% change in EAL) or the contribution of the gravity frames to overall building stiffness and strength (15% change in EAL). Although there are a number of factors identified in the literature as likely to affect the risk of human injury during seismic events, the casualty modeling in this study focuses on those factors (building collapse, building occupancy, and spatial location of building occupants) that directly inform the building design process. The expected annual number of fatalities is calculated for the benchmark building, assuming that an earthquake can occur at any time of any day with equal probability and using fatality probabilities conditioned on structural collapse and based on empirical data. The expected annual number of fatalities for the code-conforming buildings ranges between 0.05*10 -2 and 0.21*10 -2 , and is equal to 2.30*10 -2 for a non-code conforming design. The expected loss of life during a seismic event is perhaps the decision variable that owners and policy makers will be most interested in mitigating. The fatality estimation carried out for the benchmark building provides a methodology for comparing this important value for various building designs, and enables informed decision making during the design process. The expected annual loss associated with fatalities caused by building earthquake damage is estimated by converting the expected annual number of fatalities into economic terms. Assuming the value of a human life is 3.5M, the fatality rate translates to an EAL due to fatalities of 3,500to3,500 to 5,600 for the code-conforming designs, and 79,800forthenoncodeconformingdesign.ComparedtotheEALduetorepaircostsofthecodeconformingdesigns,whichareontheorderof79,800 for the non-code conforming design. Compared to the EAL due to repair costs of the code-conforming designs, which are on the order of 66,000, the monetary value associated with life loss is small, suggesting that the governing factor in this respect will be the maximum permissible life-safety risk deemed by the public (or its representative government) to be appropriate for buildings. Although the focus of this report is on one specific building, it can be used as a reference for other types of structures. This report is organized in such a way that the individual core chapters (4, 5, and 6) can be read independently. Chapter 1 provides background on the performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) approach. Chapter 2 presents the implementation of the PBEE methodology of the PEER framework, as applied to the benchmark building. Chapter 3 sets the stage for the choices of location and basic structural design. The subsequent core chapters focus on the hazard analysis (Chapter 4), the structural analysis (Chapter 5), and the damage and loss analyses (Chapter 6). Although the report is self-contained, readers interested in additional details can find them in the appendices

    Present and future resilience research driven by science and technology

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    Community resilience against major disasters is a multidisciplinary research field that garners an ever-increasing interest worldwide. This paper provides summaries of the discussions held on the subject matter and the research outcomes presented during the Second Resilience Workshop in Nanjing and Shanghai. It, thus, offers a community view of present work and future research directions identified by the workshop participants who hail from Asia – including China, Japan and Korea; Europe and the Americas

    Constitutive Modeling of the Resilient Response of Granular Solids

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    105 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1998.Finally, a few boundary value problems are analyzed with the finite element method to demonstrate the response predicted by the models described above.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD
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