MAPPING HAZARD POTENTIALS IN SEISMIC ZONES BASED ON GEOTECHNICAL DATA FOR DESIGNING TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract eng:
On designing transportation networks, bridges, as infrastructures, are found to be spreading in many locations along freeways and roads. Thus, designing bridges should cover all expected load cases and accounts for various foundation soil profiles in a reliable manner. To achieve that, correct dynamic structural analyses of bridges are required. However, the latter analyses, to be reliable, require the knowledge of the expected dynamic response of the soil-foundation-bridge structure system, which demands the characterization of dynamic soil properties using geophysical methods in advance. Consequently, and with taking into consideration the associated social and economic losses upon having partial or total damage of bridges in vital transportation networks, the effect of having different dynamic behaviors for different soil profiles under seismic actions must be accounted for. In spite of that, a major basic problem that lies in reality is the insufficient knowledge about the soil behavior under seismic waves as well as the scarcity of data for the different sites before designing. This is the case especially when knowing that the national design codes account for large areas per a single seismic zone, which may thus include different soil profiles for different sites, and sometimes in the same site. This should eventually yield an error in estimating the design dynamic loads for different soil profiles and foundation systems lying in a single seismic zone. The introduced research herein generally studies the bridge foundations vibrations under seismic events. The paper proposes initiating a map that includes a hazard potential impact factor for the different areas having different soil profiles. The resulting map should categorize the hazard potential as per the geophysical data obtained from site investigations. The case study here is Alexandria Governorate in Egypt, assumed lying within the 2nd seismic zone as per the Egyptian design code. In contrast, the General Egyptian Authority for Educational Buildings, in its soil categorization map, divides this Governorate into nine regions with different soil profiles. The proposed approach counts on actual in-situ investigations, to derive the soil dynamic properties then the results are integrated into a dynamic model for the soil-structure interaction. Finally, the simulation results associated with statistical models for earthquake occurrence are used to obtain a seismic hazard potential impact factor for each region. Results can be used to trace the best locations for infrastructures as bridges lying within transportation networks.

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