Design and validation of innovative earthquake resilient fused structures

• Main Author: Tung, Dorian Peng
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2017
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61254

Recent earthquakes worldwide have shown that even countries with modern building codes suffer significant structural damages after a strong earthquake shaking. The issue lies in the design philosophy that earthquake energy is absorbed through inelastic deformation of structural components. This creates unrecoverable structural damages and prolonged recovery time. These deficiencies can be minimized using earthquake resilient structures where earthquake energy is dissipated by specially designed structural fuses. The structural fuses are decoupled from the gravity system, and hence, they can be replaced efficiently without affecting the functionality of a structure after an earthquake. This dissertation aims to provide a consistent approach for researchers to develop and validate earthquake resilient fused structures and for engineers to design and implement such structures. It encompasses two major constituents: alternative design approach and advanced experimental technique. An equivalent energy design procedure (EEDP) is developed for fused structures. EEDP allows designers to select different performance objectives at different levels of earthquake shaking intensities. EEDP also allows engineers to select structural members to achieve the desired structural period, strength, and deformation without iterations. In addition to the design procedure, this dissertation also develops an innovative hybrid simulation testing technique where a switch-based hybrid simulation (SHS) method is proposed to validate the seismic performance of fused structures. SHS combines analytical and experimental sub-assemblies to examine the dynamic responses of a fused structure during an earthquake shaking. SHS switches between the displacement-based and force-based algorithms to control hydraulic servo actuators in displacement or force. It improves experimental accuracy and safety to test structural fuses that undergo drastic changes in stiffness. An innovative fused seismic force resisting system named fused truss moment frame (FTMF) is presented in this dissertation. The FTMF is designed using EEDP and validated using SHS. The SHS result shows that the FTMF can be easily designed using EEDP to achieve various target performance objectives under different earthquake shaking intensities. This dissertation has demonstrated that EEDP and SHS are efficient and effective procedures to design and validate innovative earthquake resilient fused structures. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Civil Engineering, Department of === Graduate