Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design

Description

Earthquake engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that designs and analyzes structures, such as buildings and bridges, with earthquakes in mind. Its overall goal is to make such structures more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake (or seismic) engineer aims to construct structures that will not be damaged in minor shaking and will avoid serious damage or collapse in a major earthquake. Earthquake engineering is the scientific field concerned with protecting society, the natural environment, and the man-made environment from earthquakes by limiting the seismic risk to socio-economically acceptable levels. Theoretical or experimental evaluation of anticipated seismic performance mostly requires a structure simulation which is based on the concept of structural likeness or similarity. Similarity is some degree of analogy or resemblance between two or more objects. The notion of similarity rests either on exact or approximate repetitions of patterns in the compared items. Design and construction are intimately related. To achieve a good workmanship, detailing of the members and their connections should be as simple as possible. As any construction in general, earthquake construction is a process that consists of the building, retrofitting or assembling of infrastructure given the construction materials available. Damage of structures can be significantly reduced through robust prediction of possible future earthquakes that can occur during the life-time of the structure and through accurate modeling of the nonlinear behavior of the structure under seismic loads. Modern seismic codes specify natural records and artificially generated ground accelerations as input to the nonlinear time-history analysis of the structure. This book offers practical tools gathered together in a convenient reference for immediate implementation. It is an ideal resource for civil and structural engineers specializing in earthquake engineering.