Earthquake engineering

Newly built and Existing structures

Earthquake engineering – Newly built and Existing structures

StructureSense undertakes conventional and specialized structural integrity studies aimed at investigating the response of newly built and existing structures to seismic excitation phenomena.

With the conventional method, the structure is subjected to loads defined by regulation. The method is elastic (assuming small displacements) while when using an inelastic method (large displacements) the approximative method static nonlinear analysis (pushover) is utilized.

The specialized study is carried out to produce safer conclusions about the response of the elements of a structure during a seismic phenomenon. This includes the use of real seismic excitations. During the analysis, the response sizes of the elements are recorded and then compared with the corresponding acceptable ones defined by regulations.


Practical advantages of a specialized earthquake study compared to a conventional one:

  1. The building is exposed to seismic simulations of real seismic frequency which is considered more realistic than the corresponding conventional spectrum simulation.
  2. The extent of the damage is detected with greater precision, something that can influence the size of invasive actions and thus the cost and delivery time of the rehabilitated structure.

 

The office specifically conducts the following studies:

  • Structural integrity studies of existing structures based on regulations (KAN.EPE 3 / FEK 3197/B/22-6-2022) and EC8-3.
  • Base isolation.
  • Restoration and strengthening using viscous dampers.
  • Soil-structure-interaction studies.
  • Seismic sequence studies.
  • Multiple support excitation studies.

Structural integrity study of a reinforced concrete building structure.

Analysis software: 3DR. STRAD

Structural integrity study of a reinforced concrete building structure.

Analysis software: OpenSees, Excel - VBA

Structural analysis and design of the building structure were performed with commercial engineering software. Results were placing the building in the ‘significant damage’ range for a seismic excitation having the exceedance probability described in Eurocode regulation. The building was then studied again with specialized software, using tcl and python algorithms to perform nonlinear time-history analysis. The results were recorded and transferred to excel where they were cross-referenced with the corresponding regulatory capacity values.

The use of the more specialized method provided a better view of the extent and magnitude of damages hence, affecting significantly the restoration procedure followed.