Seismic behaviour of geotechnical structures—Past, present and future

Author(s):  
Pedro S Pinto
2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Sica ◽  
F. Santucci de Magistratis ◽  
F. Vinale

Author(s):  
Makoto Namba ◽  
Gersonito Vieira ◽  
B Silva ◽  
Alessandro Resende ◽  
Arsenio Negro Jr.

Author(s):  
Xiaowei Cheng ◽  
Haoyou Zhang

AbstractUnder strong earthquakes, reinforced concrete (RC) walls in high-rise buildings, particularly in wall piers that form part of a coupled or core wall system, may experience coupled axial tension–flexure loading. In this study, a detailed finite element model was developed in VecTor2 to provide an effective tool for the further investigation of the seismic behaviour of RC walls subjected to axial tension and cyclic lateral loading. The model was verified using experimental data from recent RC wall tests under axial tension and cyclic lateral loading, and results showed that the model can accurately capture the overall response of RC walls. Additional analyses were conducted using the developed model to investigate the effect of key design parameters on the peak strength, ultimate deformation capacity and plastic hinge length of RC walls under axial tension and cyclic lateral loading. On the basis of the analysis results, useful information were provided when designing or assessing the seismic behaviour of RC slender walls under coupled axial tension–flexure loading.


Author(s):  
A. Sandoli ◽  
G. P. Lignola ◽  
B. Calderoni ◽  
A. Prota

AbstractA hybrid seismic fragility model for territorial-scale seismic vulnerability assessment of masonry buildings is developed and presented in this paper. The method combines expert-judgment and mechanical approaches to derive typological fragility curves for Italian residential masonry building stock. The first classifies Italian masonry buildings in five different typological classes as function of age of construction, structural typology, and seismic behaviour and damaging of buildings observed following the most severe earthquakes occurred in Italy. The second, based on numerical analyses results conducted on building prototypes, provides all the parameters necessary for developing fragility functions. Peak-Ground Acceleration (PGA) at Ultimate Limit State attainable by each building’s class has been chosen as an Intensity Measure to represent fragility curves: three types of curve have been developed, each referred to mean, maximum and minimum value of PGAs defined for each building class. To represent the expected damage scenario for increasing earthquake intensities, a correlation between PGAs and Mercalli-Cancani-Sieber macroseismic intensity scale has been used and the corresponding fragility curves developed. Results show that the proposed building’s classes are representative of the Italian masonry building stock and that fragility curves are effective for predicting both seismic vulnerability and expected damage scenarios for seismic-prone areas. Finally, the fragility curves have been compared with empirical curves obtained through a macroseismic approach on Italian masonry buildings available in literature, underlining the differences between the methods.


Author(s):  
Farshad BahooToroody ◽  
Saeed Khalaj ◽  
Leonardo Leoni ◽  
Filippo De Carlo ◽  
Gianpaolo Di Bona ◽  
...  

Geosynthetics are extensively utilized to improve the stability of geotechnical structures and slopes in urban areas. Among all existing geosynthetics, geotextiles are widely used to reinforce unstable slopes due to their capabilities in facilitating reinforcement and drainage. To reduce settlement and increase the bearing capacity and slope stability, the classical use of geotextiles in embankments has been suggested. However, several catastrophic events have been reported, including failures in slopes in the absence of geotextiles. Many researchers have studied the stability of geotextile-reinforced slopes (GRSs) by employing different methods (analytical models, numerical simulation, etc.). The presence of source-to-source uncertainty in the gathered data increases the complexity of evaluating the failure risk in GRSs since the uncertainty varies among them. Consequently, developing a sound methodology is necessary to alleviate the risk complexity. Our study sought to develop an advanced risk-based maintenance (RBM) methodology for prioritizing maintenance operations by addressing fluctuations that accompany event data. For this purpose, a hierarchical Bayesian approach (HBA) was applied to estimate the failure probabilities of GRSs. Using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations of likelihood function and prior distribution, the HBA can incorporate the aforementioned uncertainties. The proposed method can be exploited by urban designers, asset managers, and policymakers to predict the mean time to failures, thus directly avoiding unnecessary maintenance and safety consequences. To demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology, the performance of nine reinforced slopes was considered. The results indicate that the average failure probability of the system in an hour is 2.8×10−5 during its lifespan, which shows that the proposed evaluation method is more realistic than the traditional methods.


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