Estimation of NonlinearSite Effects of Soil Profiles in Korea

In a nonlinear site response analysis which is performed in time domain, small strain damping is modeled as viscous damping through use of various forms of Rayleigh damping formulations. Small strain damping of soil is known to be independent of the loading frequency, but the viscous damping is greatly influenced by the loading frequency. The type of Rayleigh damping formulation has a pronounced influence on the dependence. This paper performs a series of nonlinear analyses to evaluate the degree of influence of the viscous damping formulation on Korean soil profiles. Analyses highlight the strong influence of the viscous damping formulation for soil profiles exceeding 30 m in thickness, commonly used in simplified Rayleigh damping formulation overestimating energy dissipation at high frequencies due to artificially introduced damping. When using the full Rayleigh damping formulation and carefully selecting the optimum modes, the artificial damping is greatly reduced. Results are further compared to equivalent linear analyses. The equivalent linear analyses can overestimate the peak ground acceleration even for shallow profiles less than 20 m in thickness.