Elastic and Large-Strain Nonlinear Seismic Site Response from Analysis of Vertical Array Recordings
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 10
Abstract
Strong ground motions from the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki earthquake were recorded by a free-field downhole array at a nuclear power plant. Site conditions consist of about 70 m of medium-dense sands overlying clayey bedrock, with groundwater located at 45 m. Ground shaking at the bedrock level had a geometric mean peak acceleration of 0.55g, which reduced to 0.4g at the ground surface, indicating nonlinear site response. One-dimensional ground response analysis of relatively weak motion aftershock data provides good matches of the observed resonant site frequencies and amplification levels, provided small-strain damping levels somewhat larger than those from laboratory tests are applied. Nonlinear ground response analyses of strong-motion data using laboratory-based modulus reduction and damping relations valid up to moderate strain levels () produce unrealistic strain localization at a velocity contrast. A procedure is presented to more realistically represent the large-strain portion of backbone curves by asymptotically approaching the shear strength at large strains, which removes strain localization for this application and provides reasonable matches of observed and computed ground motions.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported primarily by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center Lifelines program and by the U.S. Geological Survey external research program under contract number G11AP20039. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank Akio Abe of Tokyo Soil Research Company for his efforts with the field work and RCTS laboratory testing and Pile Dynamics, Inc., for providing the equipment for SPT energy measurements. We also thank Veronica Tolnay de Hagymassy for her assistance with laboratory work at University of California, Los Angeles. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the PEER Center or the U.S. Geological Survey.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 10 • October 2013
Pages: 1789 - 1801
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 20, 2012
Accepted: Jan 25, 2013
Published online: Jan 29, 2013
Published in print: Oct 1, 2013
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