NONLINEAR MODELING OF LARGE-SCALE GROUND-FOUNDATION-STRUCTURE SEISMIC RESPONSE

Numerical modeling of ground deformation effects on structural systems remains an area of major challenges. Effective and efficient nonlinear soil and structural models are needed. Furthermore, calibration of the employed numerical procedures requires significant effort and judgment. In this regard, large 1-g shake table and centrifuge testing facilities worldwide are generating valuable data sets and insights for geotechnical earthquake engineering applications. In each experiment, hundreds of sensors record salient features of the involved response, providing new horizons for the development and calibration of high-fidelity computational simulation tools. Such data sets along with high performance parallel computing environments are increasingly permitting the evolution of insights, gained from analyses of entire ground-foundation-structural systems. The studies presented herein address these issues through recently conducted representative research efforts. Results are shown for situations of ground modification as a liquefaction countermeasure, and for a ground-foundation-structure seismic response scenario. A user interface for lateral pile response simulations is also discussed, in order to facilitate such studies by interested researchers and engineers.