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Currently, earthquake-resistant design of buildings based on the power calculation and presentation of effect of the earthquake static equivalent forces, which are calculated using elastic response spectra (linear-spectral method) that connects the law of motion of the soil with the absolute acceleration of the model in a nonlinear oscillator.

This approach does not directly take into account either the influence of the duration of strong motion or the plastic behavior of the structure. Frequency content and duration of ground vibrations directly affect the energy received by the building and causing damage to its elements. Unlike power or kinematic calculation of the seismic effect on the structure can be interpreted without considering separately the forces and displacements and to provide, as the product of both variables, i.e., the work or input energy (maximum energy that can be purchased building to the earthquake).

With the energy approach of seismic design, it is necessary to evaluate the input seismic energy in the structure and its distribution among various structural components.

The article provides substantiation of the energy approach in the design of earthquake-resistant buildings and structures instead of the currently used method based on the power calculation and presentation of effect of the earthquake static equivalent forces, which are calculated using spectra of the reaction.

Noted that interest in the use of energy concepts in earthquake-resistant design began with the works of Housner, which provided the seismic force in the form of the input seismic energy, using the range of speeds, and suggested that the damage in elastic-plastic system and elastic system causes one and the same input seismic energy.

The indices of the determination of the input energy of the earthquake, proposed by various authors, are given in this paper. It is shown that modern approaches to ensuring seismic stability of structures, based on the representation of the earthquake effect as a static equivalent force, do not adequately describe the behavior of the system during an earthquake.

In this paper, based on quantitative estimates of seismic risk analyzes developed in the NRU MSUCE Standard Organization (STO) “Seismic resistance structures. The main design provisions”. In the developed document a step forward with respect to the optimal design of earthquake-resistant structures.

The proposed concept of using the achievements of modern methods of calculation of buildings and structures on seismic effects, which are harmonized with the Eurocodes and are not contrary to the system of national regulations.

One of the destroying natural processes is the initiation of the regional seismic activity. It leads to a large number of human deaths. Much effort has been made to develop precise and robust methods for the estimation of the seismic stability of buildings. One of the most common approaches is the natural frequency method. The obvious drawback of this approach is a low precision due to the model oversimplification. The other method is a detailed simulation of dynamic processes using the finite-element method. Unfortunately, the quality of simulations is not enough due to the difficulty of setting the correct free boundary condition. That is why the development of new numerical methods for seismic stability problems is a high priority nowadays.

The present work is devoted to the study of spatial dynamic processes occurring in geological medium during an earthquake. We describe a method for simulating seismic wave propagation from the hypocenter to the day surface. To describe physical processes, we use a system of partial differential equations for a linearly elastic body of the second order, which is solved numerically by a grid-characteristic method on parallelepiped meshes. The widely used geological hypocenter model, called the “double-couple” model, was incorporated into this numerical algorithm. In this case, any heterogeneities, such as geological layers with curvilinear boundaries, gas and fluid-filled cracks, fault planes, etc., may be explicitly taken into account.

In this paper, seismic waves emitted during the earthquake initiation process are numerically simulated. Two different models are used: the homogeneous half-space and the multilayered geological massif with the day surface. All of their parameters are set based on previously published scientific articles. The adequate coincidence of the simulation results is obtained. And discrepancies may be explained by differences in numerical methods used. The numerical approach described can be extended to more complex physical models of geological media.

In this paper the dynamic elasticity problem of the simultaneous normal and tangential impact on the half-space is solved. This problem simulates the oblique incidence of meteorite on the Earth’s surface. The surface Rayleigh wave is investigated. The resulting solution is used as an external effect on the high-rise building, located at some distance from the spot of falling for the safety and stability assessment of its structure. Numerical experiments were made based on the finite element software package STARK ES. Upper floors amplitudes of the selected object were calculated under such dynamic effects. Also a systematic comparison with the results at the foundation vibrations, relevant to  standard a 8-point earthquake accelerograms, was made.

The study of the properties of seismic noise in Kamchatka is based on the idea that noise is an important source of information about the processes preceding strong earthquakes. The hypothesis is considered that an increase in seismic hazard is accompanied by a simplification of the statistical structure of seismic noise and an increase in spatial correlations of its properties. The entropy of the distribution of squared wavelet coefficients, the width of the carrier of the multifractal singularity spectrum, and the Donoho – Johnstone index were used as statistics characterizing noise. The values of these parameters reflect the complexity: if a random signal is close in its properties to white noise, then the entropy is maximum, and the other two parameters are minimum. The statistics used are calculated for 6 station clusters. For each station cluster, daily median noise properties are calculated in successive 1-day time windows, resulting in an 18-dimensional (3 properties and 6 station clusters) time series of properties. To highlight the general properties of changes in noise parameters, a principal component method is used, which is applied for each cluster of stations, as a result of which the information is compressed into a 6-dimensional daily time series of principal components. Spatial noise coherences are estimated as a set of maximum pairwise quadratic coherence spectra between the principal components of station clusters in a sliding time window of 365 days. By calculating histograms of the distribution of cluster numbers in which the minimum and maximum values of noise statistics are achieved in a sliding time window of 365 days in length, the migration of seismic hazard areas was assessed in comparison with strong earthquakes with a magnitude of at least 7.

The paper presents results of numerical modeling of stress-strain state of jack-up rigs used for shelf hydrocarbon reservoirs exploitation. The work studied the equilibrium stress state of a jack-up rig standing on seafloor and mechanical behavior of the rig under seismic loading. Surface elastic wave caused by a distant earthquake acts a reason for the loading. Stability of jack-up rig is the main topic of the research, as stability can be lost due to redistribution of stresses and strains in the elements of the rig due to seismic loading. Modeling results revealed that seismic loading can indeed lead to intermittent growth of stresses in particular elements of the rig’s support legs resulting into stability loss. These results were obtained using the finite element-based numerical scheme. The paper contains the proof of modeling results convergence obtained from analysis of one problem — the problem of stresses and strains distributions for the contact problem of a rigid cylinder indenting on elastic half space. The comparison between numerical and analytical solutions proved the used numerical scheme to be correct, as obtained results converged. The paper presents an analysis of the different factors influencing the mechanical behavior of the studied system. These factors include the degree of seismic loading, mechanical properties of seafloor sediments, and depth of support legs penetration. The results obtained from numerical modeling made it possible to formulate preliminary conclusions regarding the need to take site-specific conditions into account whenever planning the use of jack-up rigs, especially, in the regions with seismic activity. The approach presented in the paper can be used to evaluate risks related to offshore hydrocarbon reservoirs exploitation and development, while the reported numerical scheme can be used to solve some contact problems of theory of elasticity with the need to analyze dynamic processes.