There are three objectives in this paper. The first objective is to compare the dynamic behaviour of a reinforced concrete building structure subjected to near-fault and far-field ground motions. A twelve-storey and a five-storey reinforced concrete building with moment resisting frames were selected in this study. The Chi-Chi earthquake was selected as a first set in this study to test near-fault earthquake characteristics. Further, another earthquake record of an event at the same site was selected to test the far-field earthquake characteristics for comparison. Through nonlinear time history analyses, the results show that the near-fault earthquake results in much more damage than the far-field earthquake. The second objective of this paper is to compare the predictions for ductility demand by the nonlinear time history analyses with those obtained by the pushover analysis procedure. The third objective is to explore the parameters that will more significantly affect the the building structure's dynamic response characteristics of base shear reduction and displacement amplification.

No abstract

Structural health monitoring of concrete structures under seismic loads has always attracted a lot of attention in the earthquake engineering community. In this paper, two tests of structural health monitoring of concrete columns using piezoceramic-based sensors are presented. The first test was a shake table test of a reinforced concrete (RC) column. A piezoceramic-based device, called a 'smart aggregate', was pre-embedded and adopted for the structural health monitoring of the concrete column under earthquake excitations. The second test of this study was the in situ health monitoring of RC piers of Niu-Dou Bridge in Taiwan, under seismic loading. RC piers instrumented with the post-embedded piezoceramic-based sensors were tested using reversed cyclic loading. During the shake table test and the in situ reversed cyclic loading test, one sensor was used as an actuator to generate propagating waves, and the other sensors were used to detect the waves. By analyzing the wave response, the existence of cracks can be detected and the severity can be estimated. The experimental results demonstrate the sensitivity and the effectiveness of the piezoceramic-based approach in the structural health monitoring of large-scale concrete structures under earthquake loading.

This paper describes procedures of damage assessment for building structures in Taiwan Earthquake Loss Estimation System (TELES), and focuses on evaluation of parameters used in the building damage assessment. The objective of this paper is to define the building classification and provide the fragility functions of the general building structures in Taiwan by using the available data. The organization of this paper is as follows. First, the types of the building structures in Taiwan are reviewed and a classification based on the available data to be implemented in TELES is proposed. Second, the description of failure mechanisms and criteria in different damage states adopted in this research are summarized. Third, the theoretical methodology of the fragility analysis for the proposed building classes and examples for some typical building structures are presented. Parameters for describing the fragility functions for each class are also generated and shown in the paper.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper summarizes the results of a study that is to evaluate the structural response attributes of near-fault ground motion. Ground motion recordings from the Chi-Chi earthquake are used as inputs to the structural system. An improved nonlinear hysteretic model, based on the experimental study, was used to calculate the response of the single degree-of-freedom inelastic system. Comparison of the results of analysis with traditional elasticperfect plastic mode calculations was made. Discussions on the inelastic design spectrum, particularly the codespecified base shear coefficients, using the improved nonlinear hysteretic model incorporated with the near-fault input ground motion are made.

The objective of this paper is to describe the lessons learned and actions that have been taken related to the seismic design of bridge structures after the Chi-Chi, Taiwan earthquake. Much variable near-fault ground motion data was collected from the rupture of Chelungpu fault during the Chi-Chi earthquake, allowing the seismic response of bridge structures subjected to these near-fault ground motions to be carefully examined. To study the near-fault ground motion effect on bridge seismic design codes, a two-level seismic design of bridge structures was developed and implemented. This design code reflects the near-fault factors in the seismic design forces. Finally, a risk assessment methodology, based on bridge vulnerability, is also developed to assist in decisions for reducing seismic risk due to failure of bridges.