Earthquake Engineering: Fundamentals: This module covers, in very conceptual form, some of the basic principles of the nature

of earthquake ground motion, how it affects buildings, and how we design against it. This first set of slides describes the origin of earthquakes, the nature of faulting, and the characteristics of the waves of vibration that create ground motion. The aerial view shows the Central Medical Center of Mexico City after the 1985 earthquake . Note that some buildings, such as the multi-story parking structure, are undamaged while a totally collapsed building, which killed many people, can be seen bottom center. Other buildings have varying degrees of structural and nonstructural damage. This presentation will provide some insight into how such apparent anomalies occur. This slide gives a picture of the relative seismicity of the regions of the United States. The color scale shows the present estimated and relative seismicity, with the highest seismicity shown in black. The western United States obviously is more earthquake prone but note the high seismicity in the region of the1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes - the largest earthquakes to strike the United States. Note also the region of high seismicity around Charleston, South Carolina. This diagram explains some of the common terms used in talking about earthquakes. The location of the initial fault break is called the focus. The theoretical point vertically above this is called the epicenter. Surface faulting - where the fault break appears on the earths surface- may or not appear. Waves of vibration radiate out from the fault break, but the break itself is also expanding along the line of the fault so the radiation of the waves is much more complex than the result when a pebble is thrown into a still pond. This is a diagram of the fault break for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area. The plane of the fault is inclined to the vertical. The fault break is about 30 km long and 7 km high, centered about 4 km below the earths surface. This break did not result in surface faulting. This shows some of the common types of fault slippage. The San Andreas fault in California, for example, is a strike/slip fault.

This is a specific type of fault slippage. There is a subduction zone off the coast of Washington State, near Seattle. Waves radiating from a fault break are of four main types. First to arrive is the P or Primary wave, a back-and-forth motion, that appears as a sharp jolt. It is followed by the S wave (secondary or shear ) that is more of a rolling motion. These are deep waves,that travel through the earth to the surface. The Love and Rayleigh waves , named after famed historical seismologists, travel along the earths surface. At any given point on the earths surface, the combination of these waves produces a very complex random motion, that is predominantly horizontal,although there is often considerable vertical motion as well. There is also generally a dominant horizontal direction, but this cannot be anticipated. The result is that structures must assume that earthquake waves may come from any direction. This shows the back and forth motion of the P wave This shows the S wave, that produces the horizontal sideways motion to the axis of the waves This is an early piece of research that illustrated the random nature of ground motion at a site. Since ground motion waves produce inertial forces within structures, these forces obey Newtons Second Law of Motion. This fundamental equation, as we shall see, establishes the forces for which structures must be designed to resist earthquakes. The force equals the building mass, or weight on the earths surface, multiplied by its acceleration, which is its rate of change of motion. If an object, such as a plane, moves at a constant speed of 600 miles an hour, there is no sense of motion. The acceleration, or the rate of change of the velocity of the waves setting the building in motion, determines the percentage of the building mass or weight that must be dealt with as a horizontal force. Acceleration is measured in terms of the acceleration due to gravity or "g." One "g" is the rate of change of velocity of a free falling body in space. This is an additive velocity of 32 feet per second per second. Thus, at the end of the first second, the velocity is 32 feet per second; a second later it is 64 feet per second; and so on. This shows some common examples of acceleration that we experience. The skydivers are falling under the action of gravity, 1g, which becomes constant at about 120 mph because of air resistance. A roller coaster may experience 4g and a military jet may experience about 9g in aerobatics. Commercial aircraft are

designed to resist about 2g; in fairly severe turbulence, you may experience about 0.2 g, which is similar to what you might experience in a small to moderate earthquake. Other attributes of ground motion are important and can be derived mathematically from the acceleration. Duration is very important, because it describes how long the shaking lasts. Velocity is the speed of a particle at any instant and displacement measures how much the particle moves on the earths surface. Except adjacent to a large surface fault, displacement is usually quite small -- a few centimeters only-- but the motion of the earth may be moving thousands of tons of building material very rapidly in all directions. The initial ground motion is often amplified at a given site. The nature of the rock through which the waves pass may increase the motion, and the nature of the soils at the site has a large influence. Soft soil, such as that in alluvial plains, may amplify the motion several times. The amplification is most pronounced at short periods as will be explained later. A layer of soft soil, measuring from a few feet to a hundred feet or so, may result in an amplification factor of from 1.5 to 6 over the rock shaking. This amplification is most pronounced at longer periods and may not be so significant at short periods. The amplification also tends to decrease as the level of shaking increases. As a result, earthquake damage tends to be more severe in areas of soft ground. This section describes some characteristics of buildings or structures that have a critical effect on the way they respond to the ground motion. Every object has a fundamental period at which it vibrates if it is set in motion. It cannot vibrate at another period unless it is dragged back and forth. The ground also has a fundamental period. If an object is set in motion by an external force such as ground shaking which is at the fundamental period of the object the result will be resonance and the motion of the object will tend to increase. When you push a child on a swing you instinctively give it a push at its fundamental period which results in an enjoyable increase in the motion with very little force applied.

Similarly, if the ground pushes a building with the same period as the motion the accelerations in the building will increase, perhaps four or five times.

This shows typical periods for structures. The main determinant of period is building height and proportion; thus, a tall slender object will have a long period and sway back and forth quite slowly. So the Citicorp building in New York will sway gently back and forth every seven seconds.

A stiff object, such as a piece of furniture, will vibrate only in the first mode. Flexible objects, such as tall buildings, will vibrate in a

number of modes. The point where the direction of the mode changes is called a node.

The response spectrum is a curve that shows estimates of the periods at which maximum building response is likely- that is, the building periods for which maximum shaking can be anticipated. The spectrum shows accelerations on the vertical ordinate and periods on the horizontal. The spectrum illustrated shows a maximum response at a period of about 0.3 seconds, the fundamental period of a mid-rise building. Based on this, the building design might be adjusted so that its period does not coincide with the site period of maximum response.

The childs swing is a very efficient pendulum and will continue to swing for several minutes without any assistance although the amplitude will slowly reduce. Buildings and other objects do not swing as well because the vibration is damped, or reduced, and they cease vibrating after a few seconds. Damping is a desirable characteristic in buildings.

Even if a building is well damped, and will not resonate, it may be subjected to forces that are much higher than the computed forces for which it is designed. This is because a building would be very expensive and its functional use would be limited by huge walls and columns if it were designed for the rare maximum conceivable forces and then a factor of safety were added - as we do for vertival gravity forces.

Ductility is a very important characteristic of building structures because a ductile structure can absorb much more force than a nonductile structure before it fails. Conversely, nonductile structures such as unreinforced masonry or inadequately reinforced concrete are very dangerous because of the possibility of brittle failure.

When subjected to lateral forces, vertical members such as columns or walls may fail by buckling when the mass of the building exerts its gravity force on a member distorted or moved out of plumb by lateral forces. This phenomenon is known by engineers as the P-e or P- delta effect, where P is the gravity load

and e or delta is the eccentricity or extent to which the forces are offset. However, buildings seldom overturn in earthquakes because structures are not homogeneous but rather are composed of many elements connected together. The earthquake forces will pull the components apart and the building will collapse vertically rather than fall over. However, in the 1999 Taiwan earthquake a number of large buildings overturned; they were buildings with strong shear walls that retained their integrity when upset by soft story action, foundation failure, or a combination of the two.

Stiffness is a material property but is also dependent on shape. This is why beams are placed with their long cross-sectional dimension the vertical plane. The measure of stiffness is deflection, the extent to which a structural member moves or bends when loaded. Horizontal storyto-story deflection is termed drift.

This figure explains how the story drift ratio is measured. It is the horizontal deflection related to the story height.

A very important aspect of stiffness in lateral force design is that earthquake forces are distributed in proportion to the stiffness of the resisting elements- the forces are attracted to the stiff elements. This is very important in relation to relative column stiffness as shown in the figure. Short columns are often created unintentionally after the building is occupied when the space between columns is filled in by walls that do not reach the floor above, perhaps to allow high windows. This creates a short column condition.

Building configuration largely determines the distribution of forces throughout the building. Stress concentration results in a single, or few, components or connections receiving a disproportionate amount of stress. Torsional effects, the twisting of the building in plan, results in forces that are difficult to control.

This slide shows a common configuration that results in both stress concentration and torsion. Movement of the wings of the building results in a concentration of stress at the notch, and the asymmetry of the building results in torsion. The photo shows an L- shaped hotel building that has torn itself apart at the notch.

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Regular configurations are essentially symmetrical in plan and elevation, with no setbacks in elevation or complications in plan. An irregular building has geometrical complexities of plan, elevation, or both. In the diagram the irregular building has re-entrant corners in plan but is regular in elevation. It is also symmetrical about one axis only.

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This slide shows how torsion occurs. If the center of mass and center of resistance do not coincide, the structure tends to rotate around the center of resistance. In a symmetrical plan the two centers coincide, but torsion may still occur because of differences in stiffness of materials or because of the arrangement of the resisting elements. A symmetrical building may also have an asymmetrical structural layout, and an asymmetrical building may be structurally symmetrical with geometrical asymmetry created by lightweight architectural components.

Stress concentration means that an undue proportion of the overall forces is concentrated at one or a few points of the building such as a particular set of beams, columns, or walls. These few members may fail and, by a chain reaction, bring down the whole building. Because forces are attracted to the stiffer elements of the building, these also tend to be locations of stress concentration. People who are in the building demolition business know that if they weaken a few key columns or connections in a building, they can bring it down. An earthquake also tends to "find" these "weak links."

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This slide shows the failure mechanism of a soft or weak story. A regular building with equal floor heights will distribute its drift equally to each floor so that each is subjected to manageable drift. In the soft story building, the overall drift is the same, but the second floor connections are subject to all, or almost all, the drift and fail. However, in the soft story building, the upper floors are subject to little or no drift, and if the building does not collapse, they will often be found to be almost undamaged. Base isolation is a controlled way of providing a soft base that protects the building superstructure.

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This slide presents some examples of soft first story failures. Top left is an old apartment house in the Marina District in San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. Top right are apartment houses after the 1999 earthquake in Turkey Bottom left is the Olive View hospital in the San Fernando, California, earthquake of 1971; the building had shear walls that stopped at the second floor,which created a soft story condition. Bottom right is a building in Kobe, Japan, with an open commercial first floor.

Modern buildings are a combination of structural and nonstructural elements and components - that is, elements that are not part of the building structural system. Typically, depending on the building type, nonstructural components account for from 50% to 85% of the building cost, the higher figures applying to buildings with very expensive services, such as hospitals, laboratories, and high-tech manufacturing facilities. Nonstructural components are very prone to damage in earthquakes, even if the structure is undamaged. Damage may be caused by accelerations, or by the components - such as partitions- being distorted by the drift of the building structure. Seismic codes have provisions that provide criteria for the bracing and support of nonstructural components. III Seismic resisting system This slide shows a reinforced concrete moment resistant frame structure prior to receiving its nonstructural cladding and glazing.

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This slide shows the basic types of lateral- force-resisting structural systems. They tend to be mutually exclusive-that is, it is desirable not to mix the systems in a single building because of the different strength and stiffness characteristics of the systems. Shear walls are very stiff while moment resistant frames are flexible. Braced systems are in between. The systems have major architectural implications. Shear walls, which should run uninterrupted from foundation to roof, may impose major planning constraints on the building. Moment frames create unobstructed floors bu,t because of their special connection requirements, are expensive. Braced frames are a common compromise.

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Together with the vertical lateral- force-resisting system, diaphragms form a horizontal system that connects together the vertical elements and carries their loads down to the foundation. Large openings in the diaphragm may limit its ability to be effective in transferring forces. It is very desirable that the paths along which the loads travel from the diaphragms to the foundation be as direct as possible. Engineers regard the presence of a direct load path one of the most important attributes of a lateral- force- resisting structural system.

Shear walls are very stiff along their in-plane dimension but weak out-of-plane, so a shear wall system must have approximately equal lengths of shear wall along each axis to provide balanced resistance.

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Braced frames provide lateral resistance by their inherent geometry. Their connections must be strong, and the members must be able to resist tension and buckling. Most braced frame structures are constructed of steel.

Most braced frames are concentric-that is, the center lines of their members meet at the connection points. A newer type of braced frame is eccentric- that is the braces do not meet but a small horizontal link beam is created and is specially reinforced. Under heavy forces, failure would be localized in the link beam, leaving

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the braces and the main structure intact. The link beams can then be repaired or replaced. The link beams provide the ductility absent from a concentric brace at a cost much less than a moment frame system.

The moment frame relies on its joints to provide lateral resistance. Typically, moment frames are constructed of steel to utilize the materials inherent ductility, although moment frame structures are also constructed of reinforced concrete. Both steel and concrete moment frames require special detailing at the connections

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Several new systems have been developed in the past decade or so that are now in use. They are the result of much research, primarily in analysis and the development of special materials.

Base isolation works by lengthening the period of the building superstructure (to about 2 seconds) so that it falls in the lower end of the response spectrum and, hence, reduces the forces. Base isolation can only be used for short- period buildings. It is used for both new and retrofitted buildings and has proved particularly useful for retrofitting historic buildings because the reduction in force levels means that there is less need to insert additional structural components with consequent destruction of historic materials and finishes. Base isolation is also useful for the protection of interior systems and contents and has been used for laboratories, hospitals and museums.

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These systems work by reducing building drift and slowing down the building motion. They can be used both for new buildings and for retrofit applications. Typically they consist of bracing systems that incorporate special materials, although some systems work by using the natural ductility of steel.

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