Summary In order to identify the vulnerable parts and areas of the high‐rise reinforced concrete chimney, this paper presents an effective method, which called partitioned fragility analysis. One 240‐m‐high reinforced concrete chimney was selected as the practical project, and its analytical model was created with ABAQUS software. The selected high‐rise chimney structure was divided into 17 parts, and then the damage probability of each part in different damage states was obtained with the fragility analysis considering multidimensional ground motions. Twenty ground motion records were taken from the Next Generation Attenuation database as the input motions, and the peak ground acceleration was selected as the intensity measure. The response of the chimney structure under multidimensional ground motions was obtained based on incremental dynamic analysis. The maximum strains of concrete and steel bars were defined as the damage limit states of the chimney structure. The fragility curves and surfaces obtained from this analysis showed that the vulnerable areas of the chimney structure appear at 0–20 m, 90–130 m, and 150–200 m along the height of the chimney respectively. Based analytical results, these vulnerable parts can be retrofitted to enhance the seismic resistance of existing chimney structures. And the partitioned fragility analysis method can also be used to improve the design of new chimney structures.

SUMMARYAs a special shell structure, silos are used in storing a wide range of multitudinous granular materials. However, seldom have researchers assessed seismic vulnerability of the reinforced concrete (RC) silo. This paper aims at studying the seismic vulnerability assessment of a silo, which is located in Zhoushan, China. Prior to assessing the seismic vulnerability of the selected RC silo, the validation of the hypoplastic constitutive model, which is used to simulate granular materials, is studied. After discussing the validation of the hypoplastic theory, the numerical model considering granular material-structure interaction is developed by means of the ABAQUS software. And the numerical simulation results are compared with the experimental data obtained from a shaking table test discussed in order to confirm the validation of the numerical model, which is used to study the seismic vulnerability of the RC silo. Then the seismic fragility assessment of the selected RC silo is performed using the incremental dynamic analysis. The analytical results showed that the hypoplastic theory can be used to simulate the stored materials in the silo considering the collapse property before entering plastic state of granular materials. For the design basic acceleration, the fragility curves of the selected RC silo showed that the probability of exceeding the no or light damage state was about 2.12%. For the maximum considered earthquake, the exceeding probability of no or slight and the moderate damage states was 17.63% and 1.31%, respectively. With respect of the severe and total damage state, the exceeding probabilities were almost zero. Therefore, the selected RC silo structure has enough safety stock to withstand strong earthquakes in the future. Finally, a general design procedure considering seismic fragility assessment was presented in order to provide references for other structure design.

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