Earthquake performance simulation

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Physical simulation of earthquake performance of two building models.

Earthquake performance simulation is meant to study effect of earthquakes on building structures and is a practical way of seeing a thing to happen without it actually taking place in the same way. There are research institutions just devoted to earthquake performance simulations, like, e.g., The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation or NEES.

Physical earthquake performance simulation[edit | edit source]

Print-screen of a computational earthquake performance simulation (EPETO).

The best way to do it is to put the structure on a shake-table that simulates the seismic loads and watch what may happen next (if you have no time to stand out in the field and wait for a real earthquake to strike, of course). The earliest experiments like this were performed more than a century ago[1]

Computational earthquake performance simulation[edit | edit source]

Another way is to evaluate the earthquake performance analytically. The very first earthquake simulations were performed by statically applying some horizontal inertia forces, based on scaled peak ground accelerations, to a mathematical model of a building [2]. With the further development of computational technologies, statics approaches began to give way to dynamics ones [3].

Earthquake performance animation[edit | edit source]

GIF animation of a seismic performance of building models at a variety of ground shaking may be an effective means of research and education.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Omori, F. (1900). Seismic Experiments on the Fracturing and Overturning of Columns. Publ. Earthquake Invest. Comm. In Foreign Languages, N.4, Tokyo. 
  2. Lindeburg, Michael R.; Baradar, Majid (2001). Seismic Design of Building Structures. Professional Publications. ISBN 1888577525. 
  3. Clough, Ray W.; Penzien, Joseph (1993). Dynamics of Structures. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070113947. 

Other websites[edit | edit source]