Soil bentonite wall protects foundation from thrust faulting: analyses and experiment

When seismic thrust faults emerge on the ground surface,they are particularly damaging to buildings,bridges and lifelines that lie on the rupture path.To protect a structure founded on a rigid raft,a thick diaphragm-type soil bentonite wall(SBW) is installed in front of and near the foundation,at sufficient depth to intercept the propagating fault rupture.Extensive numerical analyses,verified against reduced–scale(1 g) split box physical model tests,reveal that such a wall,thanks to its high deformability and low shear resistance,"absorbs" the compressive thrust of the fault and forces the rupture to deviate upwards along its length.As a consequence,the foundation is left essentially intact.The effectiveness of SBW is demonstrated to depend on the exact location of the emerging fault and the magnitude of the fault offset.When the latter is large,the unprotected foundation experiences intolerable rigid-body rotation even if the foundation structural distress is not substantial.     

Seasonal Short‐Term Prediction of Dissolved Oxygen in Rivers via Nature‐Inspired Algorithms

This study challenges the use of three nature‐inspired algorithms as learning frameworks of the adaptive‐neuro‐fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) machine learning model for short‐term modeling of dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations. Particle swarm optimization (PSO), butterfly optimization algorithm (BOA), and biogeography‐based optimization (BBO) are employed for developing predictive ANFIS models using seasonal 15 min data collected from the Rock Creek River in Washington, DC. Four independent variables are used as model inputs including water temperature (T), river discharge (Q), specific conductance (SC), and pH. The Mallow's Cp and R² parameters are used for choosing the best input parameters for the models. The models are assessed by several statistics such as the coefficient of determination (R²), root‐mean‐square error (RMSE), Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency, mean absolute error, and the percent bias. The results indicate that the performance of all‐nature‐inspired algorithms is close to each other. However, based on the calculated RMSE, they enhance the accuracy of standard ANFIS in the spring, summer, fall, and winter around 13.79%, 15.94%, 6.25%, and 12.74%, respectively. Overall, the ANFIS‐PSO and ANFIS‐BOA provide slightly better results than the other ANFIS models.     

Shear effects in shakedown analysis of offshore structures

In this paper, a formulation for shakedown analysis of elastic-plastic offshore structures under cyclic wave loading is presented. In this formulation, a fast numerical solution method is used, suitable for the Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis of large offshore structures on which shear effects in addition to bending and axial effects are taken into account. The Morison equation is adopted for converting the velocity and acceleration terms into resultant forces and it is extended to consider arbitrary orientations of the structural members. The theoretical methods of the shakedown analysis are discussed in detail and the formulation is applied to an offshore structure to verify the concept employed and its analytical capabilities.     

Shakedown limit of elastic–plastic offshore structures under cyclic wave loading

This paper uses theorem of shakedown to assess the shakedown limit of elastic–plastic offshore structures. For this aim, an envelope of elastic response of the structure to cyclic loading cases is required. The shakedown limit is basically a valid collapse mechanism and can be quantified using yield line analysis. In this work, Melan theorem of shakedown (lower bound) is employed. Requiring simple elastic envelope and the domain defining yield lines only are the advantages of the Melan theorem. The shakedown analysis can be conducted by the finite element method (FEM), which is the main body of this paper. In order to evaluate the method of this paper, which is in fact combining the Melan theorem and the FEM, two steel offshore frames are analyzed using the proposed method and the results obtained are compared with the results of classical non-linear analysis method.     

Peak displacement patterns for the performance-based seismic design of steel eccentrically braced frames

Performance-based seismic design(PBSD) aims to assess structures at different damage states. Since damage can be directly associated to displacements, seismic design with consideration of displacement seems to be logical. In this study, simple formulae to estimate the peak floor displacement patterns of eccentrically braced frames(EBFs) at different performance levels subjected to earthquake ground motions are proposed. These formulae are applicable in a PBSD and especially in direct displacement-based design(DDBD). Parametric study is conducted on a group of 30 EBFs under a set of 15 far field and near field accelerograms which they scaled to different amplitudes to adapt various performance levels. The results of thousands of nonlinear dynamic analyses of EBFs have been post-processed by nonlinear regression analysis in order to recognize the major parameters that influence the peak displacement pattern of these frames. Results show that suggested displacement patterns have relatively good agreement with those acquired by an exact nonlinear dynamic analysis.