Temporal Characteristics of Velocity/Acceleration Pulses and Seismic Damage of Structures

This award is concerned about developing a new technology to study potentially damaging characteristics of near-field seismic ground motions and their impacts to building structures. By using a moving reference coordinate system, the motion (acceleration, velocity and displacement) trajectories can be decomposed into kinetically separated parameters that represent different effects of the combined dynamic forces. This approach is useful to probe the various types of structural damages caused by a near-field ground motion with prominent velocity or acceleration pulses-a phenomenon that has been observed as the cause of various types of near-field structural damages. The research will consist of three major tasks: (1). Analyze and extract damage parameters from recent major earthquake ground motions; (2). Develop a new sensing system to measure the damage parameters; (3). Integrate the identified key damage parameters into structural demand and capacity models for potential earthquake engineering application