A rapid seismic safety assessment method for mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings

The majority of existing buildings are not safe against earthquakes in most of the developing countries. Existing building stocks should be assessed with a seismic safety assessment method before a devastating earthquake. Cheaper and quicker rapid seismic safety assessment methods can be used instead of code-based assessment methods to determine the seismic performance of existing buildings. In this study, an approach was introduced to determine the seismic performance of existing mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings with fewer parameters and process steps than code-based detailed assessment procedures. Calibration and regulation of the introduced method were conducted on the 39 collapsed buildings’ projects in 1999 Kocaeli, Turkey, earthquake. Finally, 55 existing buildings located in Eskisehir, Turkey, assessed with this calibrated method and the results were compared with the results of a code-based detailed assessment method; the results showed a very good agreement of about 83%. This study shows that the proposed method can be applied for the determination of the seismic performance of existing mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings quickly and without compromising reliability.     

Experimental determination of three-dimensional dispersivities in homogeneous porous medium

Laboratory tracer experiments were conducted to investigate longitudinal dispersivity (α _x ) as well as the transversal (α _y ) and vertical (α _z ) dispersivities in homogeneous 3–5 mm sandy aquifer. The experiments were carried out in a channel 12-m long, 1.35-m wide and 0.60-m high which was built in the Hydraulics Laboratory of Civil Engineering Department in Dokuz Eylul University. NaCl was used as a tracer and conductivity values were measured at 220 measurement points. Mass Transport 3 Dimensional (Zheng and Wang in SERDP-99-1, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS, 1999; MT3DMS code) which is a three-dimensional solute transport simulation model incorporating finite differences solution option was used to solve the three-dimensional advective–dispersive transport equation. The estimated dispersivity values were modified until an acceptable compatibility between the observed and calculated concentrations at measurement points was reached. The best match was obtained for α _x  = 12 cm, α _y /α _x  = 0.2 and α _z /α _x  = 0.05. These values are compatible with those encountered in the literature.     

Spatial analyses of groundwater levels using universal kriging

For water levels, generally a non-stationary variable, the technique of universal kriging is applied in preference to ordinary kriging as the interpolation method. Each set of data in every sector can fit different empirical semivariogram models since they have different spatial structures. These models can be classified as circular, spherical, tetraspherical, pentaspherical, exponential, gaussian, rational quadratic, hole effect, K-bessel, J-bessel and stable. This study aims to determine which of these empirical semivariogram models will be best matched with the experimental models obtained from groundwater-table values collected from Mustafakemalpasa left bank irrigation scheme in 2002. The model having the least error was selected by comparing the observed water-table values with the values predicted by empirical semivariogram models. It was determined that the rational quadratic empirical semivariogram model is the best fitted model for the studied irrigation area.