Earthquake engineering research needs in light of lessons learned from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake

Abstract

Earthquake engineering research and development have received much attention since the fi rst half of the twentieth century. This valuable research presented a huge step forward in understanding earthquake hazard mitigation, which resulted in appreciable reduction of the effects of past earthquakes. Nevertheless, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the subsequent tsunami resulted in major damage. This paper presents the timeline of earthquake mitigation and recovery, as seen by the authors. Possible research directions where the authors think that many open questions still remain are identifi ed. These are primarily based on the important lessons learned from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

Finite locally resonant Metafoundations for the seismic protection of fuel storage tanks

“…One example of such an event is the loss of containment (LoC) of fuel storage tanks, pipelines, or other components of petrochemical plants and nuclear power plants. LoC events of such critical infrastructures need to be avoided at the highest priority, as past NaTech disasters have displayed their potential in causing substantial damage to the community and the environment …”

Kinematic rupture process of the 2014 ChileMw8.1 earthquake constrained by strong-motion, GPS static offsets and teleseismic data

“…Ren et al 2013;Nakashima & Lavan 2014) and the Coulomb stress change on surrounding faults, and to assess seismic hazards and analyse the possible postseismic mechanisms. Thus, collecting near field data and using them to build a reliable and accurate rupture process model is vital to understand the seismogenic structure.…”

Multi-objective optimal design of tuned mass dampers

“…Recently, the contribution of total accelerations to damage to non‐structural acceleration sensitive components in earthquake has been highlighted (see, e.g., Filiatrault et al and Charmpis et al). This is especially true in tall buildings . In wind, high accelerations are also an engineering demand parameter to be considered.…”

“…Structural damage in these cases was not reported, and interstory drift‐related damage was less apparent. Damage to acceleration sensitive non‐structural components, on the other hand, was major in some cases . In such cases, TMDs can potentially present an efficient solution for earthquake mitigation as well.…”