3D Modeling of site-city effects using spectral element method. Application to Viña del Mar city, Chile
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Date
2019
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Abstract
In recent years, seismic wave propagation analyses have become a powerful tool to evaluate the site effects in a given region. While many approaches are available, the Spectral Element Method (SEM) has been widely used for that purpose because of its flexibility and computational efficiency. Basin shape, material nonlinearity and heterogeneity are import ant effects; however, the multiple inter and structures, known as site-- actions between the soil city effects (SCI), can also play a crucial role in analyses of densely populated areas. There are many options to model this kind of interaction, especially if the buildings are partially embedded in the soil. This paper evaluates the importance of the proper SCI modeling against more standard uncoupled approaches, focusing on the local interaction between the soil and a group of buildings including inelastic s oil behavior. We focus our work on the case of downtown Viña del Mar, a touristic coastal city of central Chile, where the observation of a reiterated distribution of damage in reinforced concrete buildings during two major earthquakes has motivated numero us studies. For that purpose, a realistic 3D numerical model of the area was created, considering the existing buildings. The opensource code SPEED was used to perform the wave propagation simulation, which combines the spectral element method with a disc ontinuous Galerkin approach. A geophysical study was conducted to estimate the model parameters; in addition, shear modulus degradation and damping curves were extracted from laboratory tests to account for the nonre linearity of the soil. In general, the sults indicate that the inclusion of the SCI is beneficial to the structure's response in most cases, and that the SCI modeling needs to consider the level of embedment to obtain more precise results.
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Tesis (Master of Science in Engineering)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2019
Keywords
Soilcity interaction effects, Spectral element method, Site effects