Date of Award

5-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Legacy Department

Civil Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Nadarajah Ravichandran

Committee Member

Dr. Ronald D. Andrus

Committee Member

Dr. C. Hsein Juang

Committee Member

Dr. Weichiang Pang

Abstract

The 1933 Long Beach, 1957 San Francisco, 1967 Caracas, 1985 Mexico City, 1989 Loma Prieta, and 1994 Northridge earthquake events left evidences of how the local site condition can affect the characteristics of propagating earthquake wave from the bedrock through the top soil. The ground motion amplitude, frequency content or the duration can be affected by the local site condition and thus can cause significant amplification or de-amplification to the original bedrock motion which can seriously affect the structures. Quantification of such site effect on ground motions is a challenging task. This dissertation is dedicated to improve the existing ground response quantification techniques and the related knowledge base. The first major attempt towards ground response quantification was the development of the 1994 NEHRP (BSSC, 1995) seismic site factor provision. Since the development of the NEHRP provisions, several studies have found these factors to produce inadequate predictions for the state of South Carolina. In an attempt to generate seismic site factors based on conditions specific to South Carolina Coastal Plain (SCCP), a series of nonlinear one-dimensional ground response analyses are performed by this author as part of a research team considering appropriate soil profiles and location specific ground excitations. After the generation of this new site factor model, a systematic repercussions study is performed by applying earthquake loads, considering both NEHRP and the new site factors, on typical highway bridge structures.

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