The concept of designing structures to achieve a specified performance limit state defined by strain or drift limits was first introduced, in New Zealand, in 1993. Over the following years, and in particular the past five years, an intense coordinated research effort has been underway in Europe and the USA to develop the concept to the stage where it is a viable and logical alternative to curre...

We present a preliminary study of the dependence of the fractal features of the soil motion due to seismic noise on the near-surface geology in the frequency range from 1 Hz to ∼ 40 Hz. In detail, we have investigated the 3-d average squared soil displacement 〈r〉 and the distribution function of the displacement fluctuations in different geological sites. The anomalous scaling of the average sq...

Estimation of the dynamic characteristics of buildings is a key issue in seismic design technology. Since 1957, the Building Research Institute (BRI), Japan, has been operating a network to monitor strong motion in buildings. In this study, dynamic characteristics of 25 actual buildings in the BRI network were estimated by using strong motion records. Acceleration records from two sensors respe...

ABSTRACT: The object of this paper is to identify the optimal combination of hysteresis-model and damping parameters that lead to the best correlation between the calculated and measured seismic response. The combined effects of five parameters are investigated: initial stiffness, bond-slip deformations, post-yield stiffness, unloading stiffness, and type of damping. The first four of these par...

A main challenge for performance-based seismic engineering is to develop simple, practical and precise methods for analyzing designed buildings and assessing existing structures to satisfy considerable performance objectives. Pushover analysis is a simplified nonlinear analysis technique that can be implemented for estimating the dynamic demands imposed on a structure under earthquake excitatio...

Displacement-based seismic design and assessment procedures require as key input parameter estimates of displacement capacities of the critical elements. The displacement capacities of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls are typically determined by means of quasistatic cyclic tests. This paper shows that for URM walls failing in shear the number of applied cycles in quasi-static cyclic tests influ...

self-centering pier (scp) has been viewed as a remarkable accomplishment which is able to sustain major lateral loading with reduced structure damage in seismic engineering. stiffness deterioration observed in experiment is vital for the seismic performance of self-centering concrete pier. in this contribution, the associated stiffness deterioration with respect to the structural damage is mode...

the improvement in the temporal resolution of seismic data is a critical issue in hydrocarbonexploration. it is important for obtaining more detailed structural and stratigraphic information. manymethods have been introduced to improve the vertical resolution of reflection seismic data. eachmethod has advantages and disadvantages which are due to the assumptions and theories governingtheir issu...