Fragility-based seismic performance assessment and design procedures are being refined and adopted for many civil structures. With recent advances in computational capabilities as well as broad improvements in ground motion characterization and inelastic modeling of structural and geotechnical systems, large-scale direct models for underground structures— e.g., tunnels, water reservoirs, etc. —can now be devised with relative ease and deployed in engineering practice. In this study, a fragility-based seismic performance assessment of a large buried circular culvert and water reservoir is presented. Existing documents/codes are used to define the performance criteria and develop fragility functions through a Probabilistic Seismic Demand Analysis (PSDA) procedure. The analyses incorporate nonlinear behavior of soils and structural components, various soil layer profiles and account for uncertainties in the expected ground motions.

1. W. Zhang, M. Shokrabadi, Y. Bozorgnia, E. Taciroglu (2020), A methodology for fragility analysis of buried water pipes considering coupled horizontal and vertical ground motions, Computers and Geotechnics, 126, 103709

2. W. Zhang, A. Ghotbi, E. Esmaeilzadeh Seylabi, P. Tehrani, A. Karakoc, R. Gash, E. Taciroglu (2018), Fragility based seismic performance assessment of buried structures, Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics V (GEESDV), Austin, TX, USA, June 10-13