Influence of near-fault velocity pulse on the seismic response of subway station structure

Abstract

This research aims to explore the influence of near-fault velocity pulse on the seismic response of subway station under the condition of acceleration response spectra being consistent. Two suites of seismic motions are utilized, one suite is twelve as-recorded seismic motions with velocity pulses, and the other one suite is the corresponding artificial seismic motions synthesized with the response spectra of seismic motions in the first suite as target spectra. For each seismic motion with velocity pulse, the corresponding synthetic seismic motion without velocity pulse is generated by using the method of superimposing narrow-band time histories. Numerical model of soil-subway station interaction is developed by using the commercial software ABAQUS with a practical 3-span, 3-story subway station as the prototype. Numerical results indicate that with the engineering sites change from hard to soft and the burial depths change from shallow to deep, the adverse effect of velocity pulse is more significant, and the maximum inter-story drift ratio of subway station with a burial depth of 20 m embedded in site classes I, II and III has increased by 16.5%, 20.1% and 21.7%, respectively. However, the influence of velocity pulse on the concrete compression damage of subway station is not obvious.