scholarly journals Analytical Fragility Curves for Seismic Design of Glass Systems Based on Cloud Analysis

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1541
Author(s):  
Silvana Mattei ◽  
Chiara Bedon

Given the growing spread of glass as a construction material, the knowledge of structural response must be ensured, especially under dynamic accidental loads. In this regard, an increasingly popular method to probabilistically characterize the seismic response of a given structure is based on the use of “fragility” or “seismic vulnerability” curves. Most existing applications, however, typically refer to construction and structural members composed of traditional building materials. The present study extends and adapts such a calculation method to innovative structural glass systems, which are characterized by specific material properties and expected damage mechanisms, restraint details, and dynamic features. Suitable Engineering Demand Parameters (EDPs) for seismic design are thus required. In this paper, a major advantage is represented by the use of Cloud Analysis in the Cornell’s reliability method, for the seismic assessment of two different case-study glass systems. Cloud Analysis is known to represent a simple and immediate tool to analytically investigate a given (glass) structure by taking into account variations in seismic motions and uncertainties of structural parameters. Such a method is exploited by means of detailed three-dimensional (3D) Finite Element (FE) numerical models and non-linear dynamic analyses (ABAQUS/Standard). Critical issues and typical failure mechanisms for in-plane seismically loaded glass systems are discussed. The validity of reference EDPs are addressed for the examined solutions. Based on a broad seismic investigation (60 records in total), fragility curves are developed from parametric results, so as to support a multi-hazard performance-based design (PBD) procedure.

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 661
Author(s):  
Amirhosein Shabani ◽  
Ali Alinejad ◽  
Mohammad Teymouri ◽  
André Nascimento Costa ◽  
Mahgol Shabani ◽  
...  

Recent studies highlight the potential impact of earthquakes on cultural heritage sites and monuments, which in turn yield significant adverse impacts on economies, politics, and societies. Several aspects such as building materials, structural responses, and restoration strategies must be considered in the conservation of heritage structures. Timber is an old organic construction material. Most of the historic timber structures were not designed to withstand seismic forces; therefore, the seismic vulnerability assessment of heritage timber structures in areas with high seismic hazard is essential for their conservation. For this purpose, different strategies for the numerical modeling of heritage timber buildings have been developed and validated against tests results. After performing seismic analysis using detailed analytical methods and predicting the susceptible structural components, strengthening techniques should be utilized to mitigate the risk level. To this aim, various methods using wooden components, composite material, steel components, SMA etc., have been utilized and tested and are reviewed in this study. There are still some gaps, such as full-scale numerical modeling of strengthened buildings and investigating the soil–structure interaction effects on the seismic behavior of buildings that should be investigated.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 1404
Author(s):  
Zhihua Xiong ◽  
Chen Liu ◽  
Aijun Zhang ◽  
Houda Zhu ◽  
Jiawen Li

Due to the demands of booming Chinese cities and the increase in urban residents, the safety of aqueduct water transportation structures is noteworthy. A lot of old aqueducts were built in the 1990s and even earlier in the last century and may become vulnerable to potential earthquakes. This paper deals with an evaluation of an aqueduct’s seismic vulnerability accounting for leakage risk. Based on the Hua Shigou aqueduct in Ningxia, a probabilistic investigation was carried out to obtain the seismic fragility using Latin hypercube sampling. In the numerical study, the superstructure and substructure of the aqueduct were modeled as beam elements, and the lumped mass method was adopted to simulate the fluid–structure interaction. The rubber water stop’s mechanical performance was studied, and its damage states were proposed. Parametric numerical models were then subjected to a set of ground motions according to incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), which contained probabilistic parameters such as water, concrete strength, and bearing performance degradation. Both the system and component levels of the old aqueduct’s seismic fragility curves were obtained. It was found that the probability of the water stop’s leakage risk is significantly elevated with the increase in ground motion.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amr Ghanem ◽  
Do-Soo Moon ◽  
Young Joo Lee

Skewed bridges are commonly used in highway interchanges where the straight (unskewed) bridges are not suitable. There have been several observations of heavy damage of bridges that have geometric irregularities, especially significant skewness. Such damage severely disrupts transportation systems, leading to substantial economic consequences. Skewed bridges are often inevitable due to the complexity and lack of orthogonality of transportation networks; hence better quantification of the effects of skewness on the bridge performance is a more viable approach than avoiding skewed bridges. This research focuses on the seismic vulnerability analysis of skewed reinforced concrete (RC) bridges. From the straight to highly skewed, various bridge models are created based on design example No. 4 prepared by the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). A set of earthquake ground motion records is carefully selected to impose consistent seismic demands on bridges. The fragility relationships for all bridge configurations are derived from the non-linear dynamic response history analysis. A new structural reliability method is utilized to handle the computational challenge in deriving fragility curves, which incorporates the structural analysis and reliability analysis to calculate the failure probability efficiently and accurately with the first-order reliability method (FORM). An attempt is made to parameterize the problem based on the skew angle. It is shown that the skew angle has a direct effect on the seismic vulnerability of RC bridges. The results reported will be helpful for new designs of skew RC bridges.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amr Ghanem ◽  
Do-Soo Moon

Because changes in the structure's occupancy significantly affect the mass distribution and the structure's behavior, changing mass distribution might make the building more irregular and vulnerable to seismic ground motions. Many researchers tried to evaluate their seismic vulnerability. Most previous studies used simplified structural representations such as two-dimensional models that could not represent accurate seismic behavior from the coupling between lateral and torsional responses. For space structures with high irregularity, more realistic representations such as three-dimensional models are needed for the proper seismic assessment. To handle the computational challenge in deriving fragility curves, this research utilized a new structural reliability method that incorporates structural analysis and reliability analysis to efficiently and accurately calculate the failure probability with the first-order reliability method (FORM). This study investigates the seismic vulnerability of space-reinforced concrete frame structures with varying vertical irregularities. More representative seismic fragility curves are derived with their three-dimensional analytical models. The significant effect of the structure's vertical irregularity on seismic vulnerability is highlighted.


Author(s):  
Hoang Nam Phan ◽  
Fabrizio Paolacci ◽  
Daniele Corritore ◽  
Nicola Tondini ◽  
Oreste S. Bursi

Abstract The seismic vulnerability of aboveground steel storage tanks has been dramatically proved during the latest seismic events, which demonstrates the need for reliable numerical models for vulnerability and risk assessments of storage facilities. While for anchored aboveground tanks, simplified models are nowadays available and mostly used for the seismic vulnerability assessment, in the case of unanchored tanks, the scientific community is still working on numerical models capable of reliably predicting the nonlinearity due to uplift and sliding mechanisms. In this paper, a surrogate model based on a Kriging approach is proposed for a case study of an unanchored tank, whose calibration is performed on a three-dimensional finite element (3D FE) model using a reliable design of experiments (DOE) method. The verification of the 3D FE model is also done through a shaking table campaign. The outcomes show the effectiveness of the proposed model to build fragility curves at a low computational cost of the critical damage state of the tank, i.e., the plastic rotation of the shell-to-bottom joint.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amin Karbassi ◽  
Pierino Lestuzzi

As an approach to the problem of seismic vulnerability evaluation of existing buildings using the predicted vul-nerability method, numerical models can be applied to define fragility curves of typical buildings which represent building classes. These curves can be then combined with the seismic hazard to calculate the seismic risk for a building class (or individual buildings). For some buildings types, mainly the unreinforced masonry structures, such fragility analysis is complicated and time consuming if a Finite Element-based method is used. The FEM model has to represent the structural geometry and relationships between different structural elements through element connectivity. Moreover, the FEM can face major challenges to represent large displacements and separations for progressive collapse simulations. Therefore, the Applied Element Method which combines the advantages of FEM with that of the Discrete Element Method in terms of accurately modelling a deformable continuum of discrete materials is used in this paper to perform the fragility analysis for unreinforced masonry buildings. To this end, a series of nonlinear dynamic analyses using the AEM has been per-formed for two unreinforced masonry buildings (a 6-storey stone masonry and a 4-storey brick masonry) using more than 50 ground motion records. Both in-plane and out-of-plane failure have been considered in the damage analysis. The dis-tribution of the structural responses and inter-storey drifts are used to develop spectral-based fragility curves for the five European Macroseismic Scale damage grades.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Karagiannakis

This paper deals with state of the art risk and resilience calculations for industrial plants. Resilience is a top priority issue on the agenda of societies due to climate change and the all-time demand for human life safety and financial robustness. Industrial plants are highly complex systems containing a considerable number of equipment such as steel storage tanks, pipe rack-piping systems, and other installations. Loss Of Containment (LOC) scenarios triggered by past earthquakes due to failure on critical components were followed by severe repercussions on the community, long recovery times and great economic losses. Hence, facility planners and emergency managers should be aware of possible seismic damages and should have already established recovery plans to maximize the resilience and minimize the losses. Seismic risk assessment is the first step of resilience calculations, as it establishes possible damage scenarios. In order to have an accurate risk analysis, the plant equipment vulnerability must be assessed; this is made feasible either from fragility databases in the literature that refer to customized equipment or through numerical calculations. Two different approaches to fragility assessment will be discussed in this paper: (i) code-based Fragility Curves (FCs); and (ii) fragility curves based on numerical models. A carbon black process plant is used as a case study in order to display the influence of various fragility curve realizations taking their effects on risk and resilience calculations into account. Additionally, a new way of representing the total resilience of industrial installations is proposed. More precisely, all possible scenarios will be endowed with their weighted recovery curves (according to their probability of occurrence) and summed together. The result is a concise graph that can help stakeholders to identify critical plant equipment and make decisions on seismic mitigation strategies for plant safety and efficiency. Finally, possible mitigation strategies, like structural health monitoring and metamaterial-based seismic shields are addressed, in order to show how future developments may enhance plant resilience. The work presented hereafter represents a highly condensed application of the research done during the XP-RESILIENCE project, while more detailed information is available on the project website https://r.unitn.it/en/dicam/xp-resilience.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7572
Author(s):  
Gigliola D’Angelo ◽  
Marina Fumo ◽  
Mercedes del Rio Merino ◽  
Ilaria Capasso ◽  
Assunta Campanile ◽  
...  

Demolition activity plays an important role in the total energy consumption of the construction industry in the European Union. The indiscriminate use of non-renewable raw materials, energy consumption, and unsustainable design has led to a redefinition of the criteria to ensure environmental protection. This article introduces an experimental plan that determines the viability of a new type of construction material, obtained from crushed brick waste, to be introduced into the construction market. The potential of crushed brick waste as a raw material in the production of building precast products, obtained by curing a geopolymeric blend at 60 °C for 3 days, has been exploited. Geopolymers represent an important alternative in reducing emissions and energy consumption, whilst, at the same time, achieving a considerable mechanical performance. The results obtained from this study show that the geopolymers produced from crushed brick were characterized by good properties in terms of open porosity, water absorption, mechanical strength, and surface resistance values when compared to building materials produced using traditional technologies.


2010 ◽  
Vol 133-134 ◽  
pp. 843-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adolfo Preciado Quiroz ◽  
Silvio T. Sperbeck ◽  
Harald Budelmann ◽  
Gianni Bartoli ◽  
Elham Bazrafshan

This work presents the investigation of the efficiency of different prestressing devices as a rehabilitation measure for the seismic risk mitigation of historical masonry towers. As a first phase, the seismic vulnerability of theoretical masonry towers was assessed by means of numerical models validated with information from the literature, observed damage and behavior of these structures due to passed earthquakes (crack pattern and failure mechanisms), and mainly taking into account the engineering experience. Afterwards, the validated models were rehabilitated with different prestressing devices; analyzing the results and concluding which device or the combination of them improved in a better way the seismic performance of the masonry towers. Finally, the methodology will be applied in two historical masonry towers located in seismic areas; the medieval tower “Torre Grossa” of San Gimignano, Italy, and one of the bell towers of the Cathedral of Colima, Mexico.


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