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INSTRUCTOR: 
Praveen K. Malhotra, Ph.D., P.E., MASCE

Purpose and Background

It is widely believed that structures cannot be designed to withstand the strongest ground motions, hence certain risk of collapse is unavoidable. In the USA, seismic design of ordinary structures accepts 1% chance of collapse in 50 years. But it is difficult to accept collapses of the following structures:

• A hospital which is needed to treat the injured after an earthquake.
• A school which doubles as an emergency shelter following an earthquake.
• A levee whose collapse may flood an entire city.
• A nuclear containment structure whose breach may expose a large population to radiation.
• Heavy structures in densely populated areas whose simultaneous collapse could kill thousands.

This seminar discusses the practicality of designing structures to withstand the strongest ground motions.

Benefits and Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Characteristics of collapse-inducing ground motions.
• Strongest recorded ground motions worldwide.
• Building characteristics to avoid collapses.
• Methods of stable and reliable nonlinear analyses.
• Comparison between strongest and predicted ground motions.

Assessment of Learning Outcomes

Students' achievement of the learning outcomes will be assessed via a short post-assessment (true-false, multiple choice and fill in the blank questions).

Who Should Attend?

Structural engineers, geotechnical engineers, architects, regulators, building officials, owners, operators, geologists, seismologists, insurers, educators, and students.

Outline

Day 1

• Introduction
• Strongest Recorded Ground Motions
• Response spectrum, energy-demand, energy-centroid, normalized-velocity, and cyclic-demand of strongest ground motions
• Seismic Characteristics of Buildings
• Normalized-strength, deformability, damping, seismic toughness, and cyclic capacity of buildings
• Methods of Nonlinear Analyses
• Nonlinear-static and nonlinear-dynamic analyses for stable and reliable results

Day 2

• Collapse-Inducing Ground Motions
• The weakest ground motion that can collapse a building. Roles of deformability and hysteretic damping in collapse prevention
• Damage to a Low-rise Building from Strongest Ground Motions
• Cumulative fatigue damage to building during strongest ground motions
• Damage to a High-rise Building from Strongest Ground Motions
• Cumulative fatigue damage to building during strongest ground motions
• Damage done by aftershocks
• Recorded versus Predicted Ground Motions
• Extreme ground motions predicted by probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). Comparison with recorded ground motions. Does PSHA overpredict extreme ground motions? Drawbacks of overprediction.

How to Earn your CEUs/PDHs

This course is worth 1.4 CEUs /14 PDHs. To receive your certificate of completion, you will need to complete a short post-test and receive a passing score of 70% or higher within 30 days of the course.

How do I convert CEUs to PDHs?

1.0 CEU = 10 PDHs [Example: 0.1 CEU = 1 PDH]