Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION
maximum inter-story drift and floor acceleration,
the loss of rental cost, the income loss cost, the
cost of injuries and the cost of human fatalities.
Furthermore, the influence of uncertainties on the
seismic response of structural systems and their
impact on Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is
examined. In order to take into account the uncer-
tainty on the material properties, the cross-section
dimensions and the record-incident angle, the
Latin hypercube sampling method is integrated
into the incremental dynamic analysis procedure.
In addition, the LCCA methodology is used as an
assessment tool for the designs obtained by means
of prescriptive and performance-based optimum
design methodologies. The prescriptive design
procedure is formulated as a single-objective op-
timization problem where the initial construction
cost is the objective to be minimized; while the
performance-based design procedure is defined
as a two-objective optimization problem where
the life-cycle cost is considered as an additional
objective also to be minimized.
Infrastructure networks are vital for the well-
being of modern societies; national and local
economies depend on efficient and reliable net-
works that provide added value and competitive
advantage to an area's social and economic growth.
The significance of infrastructure networks in-
creases when natural disasters occur since restora-
tion of community functions is highly dependent
on the affected regions receiving adequate relief
resources. Infrastructure networks are frequently
characterized as the most important lifelines
in cases of natural disasters; recent experience
from around the World (hurricanes Katrina and
Wilma, Southeastern Asia Tsunami, Loma Prieta
and Northridge earthquakes and others) suggests
that, following a natural disaster, infrastructure
networks are expected to support relief opera-
tions, population evacuation, supply chains and
the restoration of community activities.
Infrastructure elements such as bridges, pave-
ments, tunnels, water and sewage systems, and
highway slopes are highly prone to damages
Earthquake loading transfers large amounts of en-
ergy in short periods of time, which might produce
severe damages on the structural systems. During
the last century, significant advances have been
made towards the improvement of the seismic
design codes. The philosophy underlying modern
codes is that the building structures should remain
elastic for frequent earthquake events. Under
rare earthquakes, however, damages are allowed
given that life safety is guaranteed. Hence, the
main task of the design procedures is to achieve
more predictable and reliable levels of safety
and operability against natural hazards. Through
extensive research studies it was found that the
Performance-Based Design (PBD) concept can
be integrated into a structural design procedure in
order to obtain designs that fulfill the provisions
of a safety structure in a more predictable way
(ATC-40,1996, FEMA-350, 2000, ASCE/SEI
Standard 41-06, 2006, FEMA-445, 2006, ATC-
58, 2009). According to the PBD framework the
structural behavior is assessed in multiple hazard
levels of increased intensity. Consequently, it is
very important to use robust and computation-
ally efficient methods for predicting the seismic
response of the structure in order to assess its
capacity under different seismic hazard levels.
In the first part of the chapter, 3D reinforced
concrete (RC) buildings with regular and ir-
regular plan views were considered in order to
examine the sensitivity of life-cycle cost value
with reference to the analysis procedure (static or
dynamic), the number of seismic records imposed,
the performance criterion used and the structural
type (regular or irregular). In particular, nonlin-
ear static analysis and multiple stripe analysis,
which is a variation of IDA, were applied for the
calculation of the maximum inter-story drift and
the maximum floor acceleration. The life-cycle
cost was calculated for both regular and irregular
in plan test examples taking into consideration
the damage repair cost, the cost of loss of con-
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