Recent experimental research has shown that ordinary unbounded steel reinforced elastomeric bearings (SREBs) can be considered as an attractive cost-effective option for the seismic isolation of highway bridges. To further investigate its benefits, the current study is focused on the seismic risk assessment of an optimally designed highway bridge isolated by SREB system. A typical three-span hi...

Animals living within seismically active regions are subjected episodically to intense ground shaking that can kill individuals through burrow collapse, egg destruction, and tsunami action. Although anecdotal and retrospective reports of animal behavior suggest that although many organisms may be able to detect an impending seismic event, no plausible scenario has been presented yet through whi...

the nonlinear static pushover analysis technique is mostly used in the performance-based design of structures and it is favored over nonlinear response history analysis. however, the pushover analysis with fema load distributions losses its accuracy in estimating seismic responses of long period structures when higher mode effects are important. some procedures have been offered to consider thi...

Models of real systems are of fundamental importance in virtually all disciplines. Models make possible to predict or simulate a system’s behavior. Since the quality of the model typically determines an upper bound on the quality of the final problem solution, modeling is often the bottleneck in the development of the whole system. As a consequence, a strong demand for advanced modeling and ide...

Analysis of the seismic risk to a structure requires assessment of both the rate of occurrence of future earthquake ground motions hazard and the effect of these ground motions on the structure response . These two pieces are often linked using an intensity measure such as spectral acceleration. However, earth scientists typically use the geometric mean of the spectral accelerations of the two ...

Design of municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills requires a considerable attention due to the undesirable environmental and socio-economical impact of a potential failure. Furthermore, recent research and engineering practice experience in developed countries characterized by high seismicity, like U.S.A and Japan, has shown that MSW landfills are vulnerable to the seismic threat. Despite the viv...

The experience of the recent earthquakes in Italy caused a shocking impact in terms of loss of human life and damage in buildings. In particular, when it comes to ancient constructions, their cultural and historical value overlaps with the economic and social one. Among the historical structures, churches have been the object of several studies which identified the main characteristics of the s...