Assessing the Simultaneous Effects of Horizontal and Vertical Components of Earthquakes on the Double Layer Barrel Vaults

Abstract

The earthquake of Kobe of Japan in 1995 had great effect on structural engineering research especially on space structures. Thereafter, a huge effort started to investigate more deeply on the seismic behavior of the space structures. This earthquake happened in a region that there were plenty of such structures and the real behavior of them were studied readily. The Kobe earthquake showed that although the vulnerability of the space structures is not as high as the ordinary buildings, but they are not aseismic. Although there are at the present considerable amount of research on the seismic behavior of the double layer barrel vaults, the available documents on the simultaneous action of the double and triple components of the earthquakes are rare and it is necessary to execute more research to assess the one or multi-directional earthquake effects on these structures. In the current research the effects of horizontal and vertical components of some earthquakes are imposed separately on some models of double layer barrel vaults. In the following the simultaneous action of both the horizontal and vertical components are considered. In all the analysis the dynamic responses of the structures are pursued considering the both material and geometrical nonlinearity. It is shown that, the double layer barrel vaults behave differently against horizontal and vertical components of earthquakes. In fact the horizontal earthquakes are more effective. However, the vertical action by itself increases the action of the horizontal component.