Generation of artificial earthquakes for matching target response unsmooth spectrum via wavelet package transform

The seismic records of target response spectrum used in the time-history analysis should be allowed to meet the norms. However, the previous fitting methods of target spectrum are mostly for the situations that the target spectrum is a smooth curve. In many cases, it needs to match unsmooth target spectrum for single determined response spectrum. An adjustment of time history via wavelet packet transform was presented, which is able to fit unsmooth target spectrum. It was found that there is a certain bias between the band center frequency of the component of seismic record after wavelet packet decomposition and the peak frequency of response spectra of wavelet packet components. For this reason, five strategies were presented to select iteration points, and the effects of the five strategies were compared with two calculation examples. It was turned out that the peak frequency of the response spectrum of wavelet packet component can lead to good fitting effect when it is selected as the iteration point. In the iteration process, it shows great promise in fitting non-smooth target spectrum and has a trend of converge.

Site response in the Qionghai Basin in the Wenchuan earthquake

Amplification effects of soil site response can significantly impact ground motions, and must be considered in the seismic fortification of buildings/structures to prevent or mitigate this potential seismic hazard. Utilizing acceleration time histories from the main shock of the Wenchuan earthquake recorded at four stations （i.e., one on bedrock and three on soil） in the Qionghai Basin, the site responses from three soil sites are studied by using the traditional spectral ratio method. The bedrock site is selected as a reference site. This study found that peak ground accelerations （PGAs） on the soil sites are much larger than on bedrock, with EW, NS and UD components of 3.96-6.58, 6.27-10.98, and 3.17-6.66 times those of the bedrock site, respectively. The amplification effects of the soil sites on ground motions in the frequency range of 0.1 Hz to 10 Hz are significant, depending on the thickness of the soil layer and the frequency content of the site. A significant amplification occurs with high frequency components of ground motion at shallow soil sites, and low and high frequency components of ground motion at intermediate soil sites.

Simplified Full Dynamic Analysis of a Railway Tunnel in Ethiopia

This paper presents an effective means of analyzing the safety of a tunnel under dynamic loading in areas with seismic records. A particular case of the railway tunnel in the earthquake-prone regions of the escarpment seismic zone of Ethiopia was the specific focus area of the research. Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) and deaggregation have been conducted to determine the design earthquake required as an input for the dynamic analysis. The PSHA performed by considering the operating design earthquake with conservative assumptions of the local geological features resulted in a peak ground acceleration of 0.36. Two pairs of design earthquake have been obtained from the deaggregation process, which were used to filter acceleration time histories for the selected design earthquake from the ground motion database of Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center. Finally, full dynamic analyses of the tunnel have been performed by applying the scaled acceleration time histories corresponding to the structure in the specific site. It was demonstrated how to prove the stability of the tunnel located in difficult ground conditions by performing plane strain analyses with the possible minimum computational efforts.

A probability-consistent method based on practical ground surface motion

In this paper, a new method for seismic hazard analysis, the probability-consistent method based on practical ground surface motion is proposed. Time histories on ground surface in the method correspond to earthquakes occurring at potential sources around sites. So of the envelope parameter, response spectrum, peak ground acceleration are of physical sense. Neglecting the response of site soil layers, the method is the same as routine probability-consistent method. The natural seismic acceleration time histories can be used for input wave directly. Generating ground motion is an approximation under lack of data of strong motion. Along with accumulating of the strong motion data around sites, we can describe the seismic environment more objectively.