Seismic responses of building and bridge structures subjected to near-fault earthquake ground motions

There are two objectives in this paper. The first objective is to compare the dynamic behavior of structures subjected to near-fault and far-field ground motions. A twelve-story reinforced concrete building with moment resisting frame and a LRB seismic isolated bridge containing a continuous girder with concrete piers were selected in this study. The Chi-Chi earthquake was selected as a first set in this study to perform the near-fault earthquake characteristics. On the other hand, another earthquake record selected at the same sites was selected to illustrate the far-field earthquake characteristics for comparison. Through the nonlinear time history analyses the results show that the near fault earthquake presents much more damage than those far field earthquake. The second objective is to explore the parameters which will more significantly affect the dynamic response characteristics of the selected structures.