Effects of site conditions on earthquake ground motion and their applications in seismic design in loess region

The Loess Plateau is an earthquake prone region of China, where the effects of loess deposit on ground motion were discovered during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake(Ms8.0) and the 2013 Minxian-Zhangxian earthquake(Ms6.6). The field investigations, observations, and analyses indicated that large number of casualties and tremendous economic losses were caused not only by collapse and damage of houses with poor seismic performance, landslides, but also amplification effects of site conditions, topography and thickness of loess deposit, on ground motion. In this paper, we chose Dazhai Village and Majiagou Village as the typical loess site affected by the two earthquakes for intensity evaluation, borehole exploration, temporary strong motion array, micro tremor survey, and numerical analysis. The aim is to explore the relations between amplification factors and site conditions in terms of topography and thickness of loess deposit. We also developed site amplification factors of ground motion for engineering design consideration at loess sites. The results showed that the amplification effects are more predominant with increase in thickness of loess deposit and slope height. The amplification mayincrease seismic intensity by 1 degree, PGA and predominant period by 2 times, respectively.

Investigation of influential factors on the tensile strength of cold recycled mixture with bitumen emulsion due to moisture conditioning

The present study attempts to investigate the effect of moisture conditioning on the in- direct tensile strength （ITS） of cold recycled mixture with bitumen emulsion. Firstly, samples were prepared using a Superpave gyratory compactor. They were hence condi- tioned using moisture induced sensitivity tester （MIST） device. Factorial design was carried out considering four factors each at two different levels. These factors were specimen thickness, air voids content, pressure and number of cycles. In the MIST device, samples are cyclically subjected to water pressure through the sample pores. The MIST conditioned samples were tested for indirect tensile strength. The analysis of two-level full-factorial designed experiments revealed that all four factors have a negative effect on tensile strength of cold recycled mixture with bitumen emulsion. Specimen thickness was the most significant factor affecting the tensile strength followed by air voids content. In two- factor interaction, specimen thickness-number of cycles, air voids content-pressure, and pressure-number of cycles were significant. The most significant three-factor interaction was specimen thickness-pressure-number of cycles. The results from the study suggest that in measuring tensile strength, the appropriate specimen thickness and air voids content should be selected to quantify the representative tensile strength for in-situ conditions.