Jaime García-Pérez

Life-cycle optimization in the establishment of performance-acceptance parameters for seismic design

A life-cycle formulation is presented for the determination of optimum values of the mechanical properties of a structural system exposed to seismic risk. The resulting values are intended for providing support for the establishment of performance-acceptance criteria and parameters for seismic design. A method is developed for the determination of expected damage functions in terms of simplified reference models of the complex nonlinear systems that are typical of engineering practice. The uncertainties associated with the use of the simplified model to estimate peak dynamic responses of the system of interest are accounted for by means of first-order second-moment probabilistic criteria. An illustrative application of the criteria proposed is presented, together with a discussion about the translation of the results of the optimization studies into engineering criteria and methods expressed in conventional design formats.

Evolutionary properties of stochastic models of earthquake accelerograms : Their dependence on magnitude and distance

An approach to generate artificial earthquakeaccelerograms on hard soil sites is presented. Eachtime-history of accelerations is considered as arealization of a non-stationary gaussian stochasticprocess, with statistical parameters depending onmagnitude and source-to-site distance. In order tolink the values of these parameters for each groundmotion record with the corresponding magnitude andsource-to-site distance, semi-empirical functionalrelations called generalized attenuationfunctions are determined. The set of realground-motion time histories used to obtain thesefunctions correspond to shocks generated at differentsources and recorded at different sites in thevicinity of the southern coast of Mexico. The resultsshow significant dispersion in the parameters of themodel adopted, which reflect that associated with thereal earthquakes included in the sample employed.The problem of conditional simulation of artificialacceleration time histories for prescribed intensitiesis briefly presented, but its detailed study is leftfor a companion paper. The criteria and modelsproposed are applied to generate two families ofartificial acceleration records for recurrenceintervals of 100 and 200 years at a specific sitelocated in the region under study. The results shownin this article correspond to acceleration timehistories recorded on firm ground for earthquakesgenerated at the subduction zone that runs along thesouthern coast of Mexico, and cannot be generalized tocases of earthquakes generated at other sources orrecorded at other types of local conditions. Thismeans that the methods and functional forms presentedhere are applicable to these other cases, but thevalues of the parameters that characterize thosefunctions may differ from those presented here.

Reliability functions for earthquake resistant design

Abstract A unified approach is presented for the establishment of design conditions and acceptance criteria for performance objectives associated with different return intervals. A life-cycle optimization analysis is adopted for this purpose. Reliability and expected damage functions are defined both for individual seismic events and for a long-term framework. System reliability functions are determined by Monte Carlo simulation for a number of multistory frames, designed for different base-shear ratios and subjected to earthquakes of different intensities. Systematic trends are identified about the variation of the reliability index with the natural logarithm of the expected ductility demand of a reference system. These trends lead to the definition of seismic reliability functions that can easily be adapted for applications to reliability-based design. The problem of transforming the results of the optimization studies into codified rules for practical design is briefly discussed.

Simulating earthquake ground motion at a site, for given intensity and uncertain source location

Following a companion article, ground motion acceleration time historiesduring earthquakes can be described as realizations of non-stationarystochastic processes with evolutionary frequency content and instantaneousintensity. The parameters characterizing those processes can be handled asuncertain variables with probabilistic distributions that depend on themagnitude of each seismic event and the corresponding source-to-sitedistance. Accordingly, the generation of finite samples of artificial groundmotion acceleration time histories for earthquakes of given intensities isformulated as a two-stage Monte Carlo simulation process. The first stageincludes the simulation of samples of sets of the parameters of thestochastic process models of earthquake ground motion. The second stageincludes the simulation of the time histories themselves, given theparameters of the associated stochastic process model. In order to accountfor the dependence of the probability distribution of the latter parameterson magnitude and source-to-site distance, the joint conditional probabilitydistribution of these variables must be obtained for a given value of theground motion intensity. This is achieved by resorting to Bayes Theoremabout the probabilities of alternate assumptions.Two options for the conditional simulation of ground motion time historiesare presented. The more refined option makes use of all the informationabout the conditional distribution of magnitude and distance for thepurpose of simulating values of the statistical parameters of the groundmotion stochastic process models. The second option considers allprobabilities concentrated at the most likely combination of magnitude anddistance for each of the seismic sources that contribute significantly to theseismic hazard at the site of interest.

Seismic zoning for initial- and total-cost minimization

We consider two design criteria to study seismic zoning. In the first, codes require that structures be designed for some specified values. Zoning is then optimal when it minimizes the expected present value of the initial costs of all structures to be built in the region being zoned. In the second criterion, it is designed so that the present value of the total cost is minimized, including initial and maintenance costs as well as losses due to damage and failure. We will call these criteria zoning for the initial- and total-cost minimization, respectively. It is shown that under certain conditions, the boundaries coincide with isoparametric curves and the problem may be solved in one dimension. We also deal with problems not reducible to a single dimension. Different methods are proposed to solve the various kinds of problems. The work ends with some illustrative examples. Copyright

Accounting for source location errors in the bayesian analysis of seismicity and seismic hazard

A method is presented for incorporating the uncertainties associated with hypocentral locations in the formulation of probabilistic models of the time and space distributions of the activity of potential seismic sources, as well as of the resulting seismic hazard functions at sites in their vicinity. For this purpose, a bayesian framework of analysis is adopted, where the probabilistic models considered are assumed to have known forms and uncertain parameters, the distribution of the latter being the result of an a priori assessment and its updating through the incorporation of the direct statistical information, including the uncertainty associated with the relations between the actual hypocentral locations and the reported data. This uncertainty is incorporated in the evaluation of the likelihood function of the parameters to be estimated for a given sample of recorded locations. For the purpose of illustration, the method proposed is applied to the modelling of the seismic sources near a site close to the southern coast of Mexico. The results of two alternate algorithms for the incorporation of location uncertainties are compared with those arising from neglecting those uncertainties. One of them makes use of Monte Carlo simulation, while the other is based on a closed-form analytical integration following the introduction of some simplifying assumptions. For the particular case studied, accounting for location uncertainties gives place to significant changes in the probabilistic models of the seismic sources. Deviations of the same order of magnitude can be ascribed to differences in the mathematical and/or numerical tools used in the uncertainty analysis. The resulting variability of the seismic hazard at the site of interest is less pronounced than that affecting the estimates of activity of individual seismic sources.

Reliability of Tubular Joints of Marine Jacket Platforms

This paper presents a group of methods for studying the structural reliability of tubular joints of marine jacket platforms, and shows also the way of using this information on the estimation of the global structural reliability. For the analysis of the joints, the following four failure modes are considered: yielding, punching, buckling and fatigue. In the process each failure mode is analyzed separately, since mechanical interactions between the different failure modes are not taken into account. In order to consider the combinations of the different failure modes, the correlation coefficients among them are taken into account. The main contribution in this paper is to provide procedures and adequate models for the analysis of the tubular joints, whose local handling is decisive on the correct estimation of its global performance and reliability.© 2003 ASME