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a b s t r a c tObservations from recent earthquakes show that retaining structures with non-liquefiable backfills perform extremely well; in fact, damage or failures related to seismic earth pressures are rare. The seismic response of a 6-m-high braced basement and a 6-m free-standing cantilever wall retaining a compacted low plasticity clay was studied in a series of centrifuge tests. The models were built at a 1/36 scale and instrumented with accelerometers, strain gages and pressure sensors to monitor their response. The experimental data show that the seismic earth pressure on walls increases linearly with the free-field PGA and that the earth pressures increase approximately linearly with depth, where the resultant acts near 0.33 H above the footing as opposed to 0.5-0.6 H, which is suggested by most current design methods. The current data suggest that traditional limit equilibrium methods yield overly conservative earth pressures in areas with ground accelerations up to 0.4g.

Recent earthquakes have shown that wine barrel stacks are highly susceptible to collapse, leading to large economic losses, downtime, and longer recovery periods. This study presents a methodology using a probabilistic approach for estimating the fragility functions and economic losses in barrel stacks. The seismic response of these systems was determined from the dynamic equilibrium equations that describe the position and orientation of each element. The analysis considered ground motions scaled at different intensity levels and different barrel stack configurations; the simulations enabled reproducing the most common collapse mechanisms observed in the field and in shaking table experiments. From a statistical analysis of the results, vulnerability functions were evaluated as the probability of being within a specific damage state for a given ground motion intensity. Additional numerical simulations were performed to study the effects of the inherent uncertainty of the interface parameters controlling the dynamic response and collapse sequence of the barrel stacks. Furthermore, this methodology was used to evaluate the impact effect and improvement of a base isolation solution as a damage mitigation measure.

Observations of the performance of basement walls and retaining structures in recent earthquakes show that failures of basement or deep excavation walls in earthquakes are rare even if the structures were not designed for the actual intensity of the earthquake loading. Failures of retaining structures are most commonly confined to waterfront structures retaining saturated backfill with liquefaction being the critical factor in the failures. Failures of other types of retaining structures are relatively rare and usually involve a more complex set of conditions, such as sloping ground either above or below the retaining structure, or both. While some failures have been observed, there is no evidence of a systemic problem with traditional static retaining wall design even under quite severe loading conditions. No significant damage or failures of retaining structures occurred in the recent earthquakes such as Wenchuan earthquake in China (2008) and, or the large subduction zone earthquakes in Chile (2010) and Japan (2011). Therefore, this experimental and analytical study was undertaken to develop a better understanding of the distribution and magnitude of seismic earth pressures on cantilever retaining structures.The experimental component of the study consists of two sets of dynamic centrifuge model experiments. In the first experiment two model structures representing basement type setting were used, while in the second test a U-shaped channel with cantilever sides and a simple cantilever wall were studied. All of these structures were chosen to be representative of typical designs. Dry medium-dense sand with relative density on the order of from 75% to 80% was used as backfill. Results obtained from the centrifuge experiments were subsequently used to develop and calibrate a two-dimensional, nonlinear, finite difference model built on the FLAC platform.The centrifuge data consistently shows that for the height of structures considered herein, i.e. in the range of 20-30 ft, the maximum dynamic earth pressure increases with depth and can be reasonably approximated by a triangular distribution This suggests that the point of application of the resultant force of the dynamic earth pressure increment is approximately 1/3H 2 above the base of the wall as opposed to 0.5-0.6 H recommended by most current design procedures. In general, the magnitude of the observed seismic earth pressures depends on the magnitude and intensity of shaking, the density of the backfill soil, and the type of the retaining structures. The computed values of seismic earth pressure coefficient ( K ae ) back calculated from the centrifuge data at the time of maximum dynamic wall moment suggest that for free standing cantilever retaining structures seismic earth pressures can be neglected at accelerations below 0.4 g. While similar conclusions and recommendations were made by , their approach assumed that a wall designed to a reasonable static factor of safety should be able to resist seismic loads up 0.3 g. In the present study, experimental da...

The correlation between spectral accelerations is key in the construction of conditional mean spectra, the computation of vector-valued seismic hazard, and the assessment of seismic risk of spatially distributed systems, among other applications. Spectral correlations are highly dependent on the earthquake database used, and thus, region-specific correlation models have been developed mainly for earthquakes in western United States, Europe, Middle East, and Japan. Correlation models based on global data sets for crustal and subduction zones have also become available, but there is no consensus about their applicability on a specific region. This study proposes a new correlation model for 5% damped spectral accelerations and peak ground velocity in the Chilean subduction zone. The correlations obtained were generally higher than those observed from shallow crustal earthquakes and subduction zones such as Japan and Taiwan. The study provides two illustrative applications of the correlation model: (1) computation of conditional spectra for a firm soil site located in Santiago, Chile and (2) computation of bivariate hazard for spectral accelerations at two structural periods.

The 27 February 2010 Maule, Chile, earthquake occurred during the driest time of the year, which implied that most of the soils in the slopes were not saturated and that the dams had extra freeboard. This may explain the small number of slope failures caused by the earthquake. However, two important earth dams suffered seismically induced permanent ground movements, but no catastrophic damage was reported because the reservoirs levels were low. Five medium-sized mine tailings dams failed due to liquefaction; one of them tragically caused four casualties. Retaining structures of all types performed well and no failures were observed.

Soil liquefaction occurred at many sites during the 2010 Maule, Chile, earthquake, often leading to ground failure and lateral spreading. Of particular interest are the effects of liquefaction on built infrastructure. Several buildings were damaged significantly due to foundation movements resulting from liquefaction. Liquefaction-induced ground failure also displaced and distorted waterfront structures, which adversely impacted the operation of some of Chile's key port facilities. Important case histories that document the effects of ground failure on buildings, ports, and industrial facilities are presented in this paper.