Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis is a technique for estimating the annual rate of exceedance of a specified ground motion at a site due to the known and suspected earthquake sources. A Monte-Carlo approach is utilized to estimate the seismic hazard at a site. This method uses numerous resampling of an earthquake catalog to construct synthetic catalogs to evaluate the ground motion hazard a...

Displacement Coefficient Method (DCM) stipulated in the ASCE 41-06 standard is becoming the preferred method for seismic rehabilitation of buildings in many high-seismic-hazard countries. Applications of the method for non-building constructions such as bridges are beyond the scope of this standard. Thus its application to this kind of structure should be approached with care. Target displaceme...

The Azores archipelago is a zone with a vast cultural heritage, presenting a building stock mainly constructed in traditional stone masonry. It is known that this type of construction exhibits poor behaviour under seismic excitations; however it is extensively used in seismic prone areas, such as this case. The 9th of July of 1998 earthquake was the last seismic event in the islands, leaving ma...

A seismic method (e.g., surfaceor body-wave method) has been often used in pavement engineering to evaluate such critical constructional parameters as the E-modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Conventional method usually uses one or two-channel recording device (e.g., dynamic signal analyzer) for data acquisition whose cost is by no means trivial. In addition, recent applications with the multichannel...

In case of porous fluid-saturated medium the Biot’s poroelasticity theory predicts a movement of the pore fluid relative to the skeleton on seismic wave propagation through the medium. This phenomenon opens an opportunity for investigation of the flow properties of the hydrocarbon-saturated reservoirs. It is well known that relative fluid movement becomes negligible at seismic frequencies if po...

Sponsored by Defense Threat Reduction Agency Contract DSWA01-98-C-0176 The Mine The cooperating mine was the Morenci Mine operated by Phelps-Dodge in SE Arizona. The scale of the operation is illustrated below. The mine produces over 25% of all US copper. Three to five blasts are detonated daily. During July and August, 31% of the events in the USGS Mine Event List were from this mine. Regional...

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are a class of alloys that possess numerous unique characteristics. They offer complete shape recovery after experiencing large strains, energy dissipation through hysteresis of response, excellent resistance to corrosion, high fatigue resistance and high strength. These features of SMAs which can be exploited for the use in control of civil structures subjected to se...