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Seismic engineering, a critical field with significant societal implications, often presents communication challenges due to the complexity of its concepts. This paper explores the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in bridging these communication gaps. The study delves into how AI can simplify intricate seismic engineering terminologies and concepts, fostering enhanced understanding among students, professionals, and policymakers. It also presents several intuitive case studies to demonstrate the practical application of ChatGPT in seismic engineering. Further, the study contemplates the potential implications of AI, highlighting its potential to transform decision-making processes, augment education, and increase public engagement. While acknowledging the promising future of AI in seismic engineering, the study also considers the inherent challenges and limitations, including data privacy and potential oversimplification of content. It advocates for the collaborative efforts of AI researchers and seismic experts in overcoming these obstacles and enhancing the utility of AI in the field. This exploration provides an insightful perspective on the future of seismic engineering, which could be closely intertwined with the evolution of AI.

Random variables introduced in modelling of seismic engineering are often the result of cognitive limitations and the unpredictability of structures, leading to uncertainties in the field. A practical method for dealing with them is to develop sensitivity analysis in the framework of data and probability statistics. Of existing non-structural components, cable tray systems are characterized by a number of uncertainties which may influence their bearing capacity drastically. In this research, the main characteristics of material, geometry, member layout along with the connection stiffness in cable tray are considered as random variables using global sensitivity analysis, with their results relative importance of these potential uncertainties on the seismic performance of cable tray. The sensitivity analysis method developed especially for cable tray under seismic excitation is constructed based on modal analysis and equivalent inertia force method combined with the Latin hypercube sampling method. The final results demonstrate the need to consider the effects of random variables in modeling assumption in seismic performance analyses of cable tray and can be further used in optimization design.

Machine Learning (ML) has developed rapidly in recent years, achieving exciting advancements in applications such as data mining, computer vision, natural language processing, data feature extraction, and prediction. ML methods are increasingly being utilized in various aspects of seismic engineering, such as predicting the performance of various construction materials, monitoring the health of building structures or components, forecasting their seismic resistance, predicting potential earthquakes or aftershocks, and evaluating the residual performance of post-earthquake damaged buildings. This study conducts a scientometric-based review on the application of machine learning in seismic engineering. The Scopus database was selected for the data search and retrieval. During the data analysis, the sources of publications relevant to machine learning applications in seismic engineering, relevant keywords, influential authors based on publication count, and significant articles based on citation count were identified. The sources, keywords, and publications in the literature were analyzed and scientifically visualized using the VOSviewer software tool. The analysis results will help researchers understand the trending and latest research topics in the related field, facilitate collaboration among researchers, and promote the exchange of innovative ideas and methods.

Attention should be paid to tunnels' seismic behaviour since many of them have been damaged by earthquakes. The paper presented a seismic study of a shallow circular tunnel by physical modelling on shaking table test. A small scale tunnel model of the Hanoi pilot metro line's underground segment was placed in the middle of a rigid soil container and buried in Red River sand (Vietnam). The table was vibrated along the soil container's long wall, with a simulated seismic wave created from the 1788 Tolmezzo (Italia) accelerogram. Five testing campaigns were executed, and the model's acceleration data were studied. The uni-directional vibration created by the shaking table caused the three-directional vibration of the physical model. The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) frequency spectrum analyses were performed. The vibration characteristics of the model (i.e., frequency graph's structure, maximal acceleration, dominant frequency, strong-motion duration) in three orthogonal directions under the artificial earthquake action were compared. The obtained results proved the complicated seismic impacts on a shallow tunnel.

The north of the state of Baja California (BC) is located in one of the regions of Mexico with a high seismic risk. The predominant infrastructure in the city of Tijuana consists of reinforced masonry housing structures, making it crucial to understand the dynamic behavior of this type of structure. Using the “Vulnerability Modeller’sToolKit” (VMTK), fragility functions were obtained for low, medium, and high levels of seismic design. It was found that the probability of achieving or surpassing the different damage states (light, moderate, extensive, and complete) is high in low-height housing (1–3 floors) for an expected value of 0.50 g of PGA and in medium-height housing (4–7 floors) for an expected value of 0.5 g of SA (T = 0.5 s).Vulnerability functions were derived, and it was determined that, for a low seismic design level, low-height and medium-height structures, respectively presented loss probability rates of 30% and 44% for an expected value of 0.50 g of PGA and SA (T = 0.5 s). These fragility and vulnerability functions can be used to estimate damage and losses in future risk scenarios, thereby reducing uncertainty in the risk analysis calculations for the city of Tijuana.

In recent decades, one of the most interesting innovations has undoubtedly been the application of resilience principles to the study and mitigation of seismic risk. However, although new rigorous mathematical models have become available in the context of seismic resilience assessment, their applications to real case studies focus on a local scale, or even single structures. Consequently, new models and procedures are absolutely necessary to adopt resilience measurements in the formulation of mitigation strategies on a national or subnational scale. Given the crucial role of residential buildings in the global resilience of Italian cities against major earthquakes, a new framework for large-scale applications is proposed to roughly measure the seismic resilience of communities through the integration of an empirical recovery function based on the reconstruction process of housing systems in the aftermath of the 2012 Northern Italy Earthquake. As a first attempt, the framework is applied to housing systems in the southern regions of Italy by modelling their physical damage with vulnerability curves defined on the basis of macroseismic approaches. The main results are presented and discussed in terms of average functionality levels over time in order to compare and understand the recovery capacity of the considered housing systems.

In this study, the seismic behavior of an all-steel buckling-restrained (AB) steel plate shear wall (SPSW) with incline slits under fire and cyclic loading was investigated. ABSPSW was composed of two thin steel infill plates with a narrow distance from each other, which were embedded with incline slits on each plate. These slits were in opposite directions to each other. The finite element (FE) numerical model was validated with three test specimens and after ensuring the modeling strategy, the parametric study was performed by considering variables such as wall plate thickness, slit width, strip width between two slits, and degree of temperature. A total of 256 FE numerical models were subjected to coupled temperature-displacement analysis. The results of the analysis showed that the high temperature reduced the seismic performance of the ABSPSW so that at 917oC, the load-bearing capacity was reduced by 92%. In addition, with the increase in the temperature, the yield point of the infill plate and frame occurred in a small displacement. The average decrease in shear strength at 458°C, 642°C, and 917°C was 18%, 46%, and 92%, respectively, compared to the shear strength at 20°C. Also, with increasing the temperature to 917°C, ductility increased by an average of 75%.

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures could suffer from the combined action of fires, earthquakes, and other loads during their life cycle; more importantly, coupled disasters lead to further deterioration and damage to structural performance. This paper investigated the multiple performances and distinguished the safe working conditions of the RC column subjected to simultaneously combined fire and cyclic loads. The numerical model considered the degradation of the mechanical properties of steel and concrete and the bond-slip performance between steel and concrete at high temperatures. The results show that the performance of RC columns with different section sizes, longitudinal reinforcement ratios, cover thicknesses, axial load ratios, and cyclic loads differs greatly under simultaneously combined fire-cyclic loads. In specific, when the cyclic load application time is less than 2 h, the cyclic load has little effect on the response of the RC column. According to the different characteristics of RC columns when subjected to combined fire-cyclic loads, the firing process of RC columns is divided into four stages. To avoid the excessive performance degradation of RC columns, the minimum designed fire resistance time of RC columns is recommended to be 2.5 times the fire resistance time of the RC column under static loads.

The design of earthquake-resistant structures by applying traditional or performance-based seismic analysis methods involves two large variables: the seismic risk of the area and the physical characteristics of the structure. Before analyzing any building, it is required to determine the seismicity in the location to evaluate the accelerations that the structure must withstand by deterministic or probabilistic methods. The typical results of a seismic study are the uniform hazard spectra in the rock layer related to a specific return period and structural damping. The building codes use different methods to obtain the elastic response spectra, seeking to offer simple procedures by using parametric factors to consider the soil type; however, the procedure tends to return conservative estimates. On the other hand, site-specific spectra offer accurate and less conservative acceleration values, with the disadvantage of an extensive and costly mathematical process, justifying their application mostly to important structures. This review article gives the state of the art of seismic elastic response spectra using probabilistic seismic hazard maps as inputs, taking into account the importance of the structure and the soil type, according to Mexican, U.S., and international building codes.

Inelastic deformation of metallic materials is one of the most effective mechanisms for the dissipation of energy input to a structure by an earthquake. Metallic dampers are special devices that resort to this source of energy dissipation, proving to be a cost-efficient solution for the seismic protection of structures. Two important issues arise when implementing metallic dampers in real structures: (1) Inelastic deformations cause damage that must be quantified after an earthquake to decide upon their eventual replacement; (2) dampers must possess an energy dissipation capacity large enough to endure severe earthquakes. This paper focuses on a particular type of metallic damper consisting of slit-plates made of stainless steel, applied to reinforced concrete frames with rocking columns at the first story. In particular, a new damage index based on the metallic magnetic memory (MMM) method is proposed and validated experimentally to quantify the damage of slit plate dampers subjected to cyclic loadings. Further, the seismic response of a frame with rocking columns that incorporate the damper is obtained to demonstrate that it can endure severe earthquakes without failing, and to emphasize the relevance of the proposed MMM damage index that would make its replacement after a severe earthquake unnecessary.

Identification and classification of the different structures and infrastructures that make up a city (conventional buildings, power stations, nuclear power stations, routes of communication, etc.) are of great importance at the time of characterize their vulnerability and carry out estimates of seismic risk. Different types have different physical damage to some seismic movement, hence the importance of correctly assign a class of vulnerability. For this reason, it is necessary to know, updated form, the distribution and composition of structures and infrastructure of a city. Behaviour that presented these elements to a seismic phenomenon is linked, among others, building material and its geometric shape. Today, cadastral information updated about the infrastructure of a city does not have the data necessary and useful to carry out a calculation of seismic risk. For decades, the way of being able to have such information, has been through the development of campaigns of field for the elaboration of databases. This practice entails long time of work and the need for qualified personnel for the identification of the constructive typologies of the different structures. Nowadays, there are different geospatial techniques that allow data acquisition on a massive scale in a short time. In particular, by means of laser measurements, it is possible to have clouds of millions of points with geometric and radiometric information in a matter of seconds. This article presents a line of research whose main objective is to innovate in the vulnerability mapping and seismic risk estimation methods using geospatial techniques: static and dynamic laser. The end is contributing to knowledge and more accurate risk results, on which will be supported after the emergency plans that facilitate post event actions.

This paper proposes a pulse-echo Ultrasonic Testing (UT) methodology to quantify the damage of hysteretic dampers subjected to cyclic loadings. Energy dissipation is known as an innovative strategy for the protection of buildings against earthquakes. It consists of installing special devices called dampers in the construction, which are entrusted to dissipate most of the energy input by the earthquake, thus keeping the main structure basically undamaged. In particular, the hysteretic dampers dissipate the input energy through plastic deformations in their metallic parts. Several moderate ground motions would not exhaust the capacity of the dampers, but they cause damage—plastic deformations in the device. Therefore, continuous or periodic inspections of the damper are required in order to decide upon its eventual replacement. In this particular work, several hysteretic dampers made of stainless steel were subjected to different patterns of low-frequency cyclic loads that caused diverse levels of damage. Each damper underwent pulse-echo UT before and after the cyclic loading. Spectral energy of the echo signals was properly calculated at each damage level in order to define a reliable damage index. The new index has been compared with a well-established mechanical damage index, ID, previously proposed by the authors. A successful correlation was observed, making the pulse-echo UT technique promising for this particular application.

Relative wavelet energy entropy (RWEE) is proposed to detect and quantify damage to hysteretic dampers used for the passive seismic control of building structures. Hysteretic dampers have the role of dissipating most of the energy input of an earthquake. Minor or moderate earthquakes do not exhaust the energy dissipation capacity of the dampers, yet they damage them. For this reason, continuous or periodic damper-health evaluation is required to decide if they need to be replaced. Such evaluation calls for the application of efficient structural health monitoring techniques (SHM). This paper focuses on the well-known vibration technique, which is applied to a particular type of hysteretic damper called Web Plastifying Damper (WPD), patented by the University of Granada. Vibration signals, properly recorded by piezoelectric sensors attached around the damaged area of the dampers, are decomposed by means of wavelet packet analysis. Then, the relative wavelet energy entropy of these decompositions is used to calculate the proposed index. Validation of RWEE for this particular application involved dampers installed in two different specimens of reinforced concrete structures subjected to earthquake sequences of increasing intensity. When compared with a well-established mechanical energy-based damage index, results demonstrate that RWEE is a successful and low-cost technique for reliable in-situ monitoring of dampers.

Earthquakes are natural disasters which affect Mexico regularly. It is very important to obtain all information about them quickly, in order to speed up attention to population affected and if it is possible, applying prevention actions. At present time, to obtain knowledge of seismic events is essential to use computer and specialized software. In this study 22 software applications for seismic analysis have been examined in order to define predominant characteristics, strengths and limitations, to provide current status of this particular field and generating lines of advance for new developments or prototypes. It shows clearly the existing technological dependency of this country as much in hardware as software. Therefore academic cooperation between different branches of engineering should be encouraged for the creation of new domestic products.

O território brasileiro apresenta baixa atividade sísmica, característica de região tectônica intra-placas. Entretanto, os efeitos dos sismos não podem ser simplesmente desconsiderados em projetos de engenharia. Assim, é apresentado neste trabalho um estudo da sismicidade da região Nordeste do Brasil, que por estar posicionada próxima à falha do Atlântico Central, a leva a apresentar uma taxa de atividade sísmica com con- tinuidade de ocorrência mais alta do que a de outras regiões brasileiras. Dentro deste contexto, são calculadas as recorrências sísmicas e as distribuições probabilísticas de acelerações espectrais para a região. De posse desses valores, são determinados os espectros de resposta de projeto para a região, fazendo as devidas comparações entre os resultados obtidos para cada período de recorrência com o espectro apresen- tado pela Norma Brasileira de Sismos NBR 15421.