PERFORMANCE-BASED SEISMIC RESPONSE OF BURIED STEEL PIPELINSE

Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) has appeared as a basis of modern earthquake engineering as it attempts to improve deciding about seismic risk by methods that are more informative than current approaches. However, little work has been carried out investigating the seismic response of buried steel pipelines within a performance-based framework. In this research the seismic demands of buried steel pipelines are studied in a performance-based context. Several nonlinear dynamic analyses of four buried steel pipe models with different D/t, H/Dratios and different soil properties and different pressures, performed under an ensemble offar-field earthquake ground motion records were scaled to several intensity levels to capture the behavior of buried pipeline from elastic response through to global instability. Several scalar ground motion intensity measures (IMs) are used to investigate their correlation with engineering demand parameter (EDP) which is measured by peak axial compressive strain in critical section of pipe. Using regression analysis it is concluded that, velocity-based IMs are the most appropriate ones in evaluating the buried steel pipelines response efficiently.