Combined Effect of Vertical and Horizontal Ground Motions on Failure Probability of RC Chimneys

Abstract

Previous earthquake events have shown that chimneys are one of the most fragile structures. Studies have focused on the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) chimney structures subjected to earthquake load only along the horizontal direction. However, the vertical component of strong ground motion has been proven to damage or completely destroy civil structures. Therefore, it is essential to determine the failure probability of RC chimneys under both horizontal and vertical directions. In this study, the seismic behavior of an RC chimney was studied through seismic fragility analysis, wherein a fragility model based on the intensity ratio between the vertical and horizontal components was proposed. In the fragility analysis, different intensity ratios of near-fault ground motions (NFGMs) between the vertical and horizontal components were considered. The findings indicate that the NFGMs along the vertical and horizontal directions significantly affect the failure probability if the intensity of the horizontal component is above a certain threshold. Moreover, the failure probability increases with the intensity of the vertical and horizontal ground motions. Therefore, the influence of the combination of the vertical and horizontal components of the NFGMs should be considered in the safety evaluation of RC chimney structures.

Strong Far‐Field Vertical Excitation and Building Damage: A Systematic Review and Future Avenues

“…e authors concluded that the increase in axial force will give rise to significant reduction in shear capacity and thus aggravate the possibility of shear failure. Guo et al [88] studied the combined effect of horizontal and vertical ground shaking on RC chimneys using fragility based assessment.…”

“…Although the scope of the paper is limited to building structures only, the authors recognize the notable contributions in the field of bridge engineering considering the effects of vertical excitation as reported elsewhere (see, e.g., [66,[96][97][98][99][100][101], among others). Despite buildings and bridges, many researchers have considered the vertical excitation to assess the seismic performance of various types of structures (e.g., [88,[102][103][104][105][106], among others).…”

Seismic fragility assessment of high-rise stacks in oil refineries

“…A handful of studies is available on the seismic fragility of reinforced concrete (RC) chimneys via numerical models (e.g. Huang et al 2004;Gould and Huang 2006;Zhou et al 2015Zhou et al , 2019Guo et al 2018Guo et al , 2019Qiu et al 2020), while contributions on steel chimneys and process towers are very scarce (e.g. Lopez et al 1996;Moharrami and Amini 2014).…”

Spectral Representation‐Based Multidimensional Nonstationary Ground Motion Model for Seismic Reliability Analysis of Frame Structures

“…Among these, Qu et al develop pushover methods for seismic assessment of buildings under multidimensional earthquakes, with the objective of overcoming the drawbacks of the conventional modal pushover method [17]. In other examples, Farahmand-Tabar and Barghian carry out a seismic assessment of a cable-stayed arch bridge under three-component orthotropic earthquake excitation [18], Lin et al investigate the seismic behavior of long-span connected structures under multisupported and multidimensional earthquake excitations [19], and Guo et al study the combined effect of vertical and horizontal ground motions on the failure probability of reinforced concrete chimneys [20]. Wang et al present a detailed review of the development and evaluation of multidimensional combination rules and their adoption in modern design codes and standards [21].…”