INVESTIGATION OF THE SURFACE FAULT RUPTURE MITIGATION BY NUMERICAL MODELLING

In regions where soils overlie active faults, structures must be designed for risk of failure due to excessive permanent soil deformations induced by surface fault rupture, in addition to adequately designed against dynamic loads during a severe earthquake. Although our understanding of the dynamic response of structures are improved in current practice, relatively recent earthquakes such as the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan and the 1999 Kocaeli and Duzce earthquake in Turkey have reminded the profession of the devasting effects of earthquake surface fault rupture on facilities and engineered structures and much more efforts must be devoted to improving our understanding of fault rupture propagation through soil and how ground movements associated with surface faulting affect structures. This paper contributes to the understanding of the investigation of the earthquake surface fault rupture hazards by numerical modelling. Non- linear numerical modelling is applied to analyse fault rupture propagation in the free field, ignoring the presencs of a structure, and then with knowing the location of rupture outcropping, the analysis is performed regard one potential mitigation scheme by using geogrids in the soil near surface. The results indicate that the geogrids reinforcement is effective in mitigating the significant hazards associated with earthquake fault rupture.

Keywords:

Fault Rupture , Numerical Modeling , Mitigation , Geogrids