Practical seismic analysis of large underground structures: Theory and application

Due to the conceptual clarity and calculational simplicity, practical methods for seismic analysis have been widely used in seismic design and calculation of underground structures. All of the commonly adopted practical methods assume that the earthquake inertia force of the analysis model equals that of free-field. However, this assumption neglects the influence of underground structures on their surrounding soil layers, and may lead to significant errors in both conceptual and computational terms when the size of a structure increases. This article focuses on the practical seismic analysis of large underground structures. Theoretical derivation is demonstrated on the basis of the establishment of mechanical models of the soil-structure system and free-field, and consequently, the quantitative relation between the seismic acceleration response of the soil-structure system and that of free-field is obtained. This relation can be used to revise the earthquake inertia force applied to the analysis model so that the calculation accuracy is effectively improved. By doing so, a revised pushover analysis method, which combines the traditional pushover analysis and theoretical derivation, is proposed in order to be appropriate to seismic analysis of large underground structures. Moreover, an example of application of the proposed method is given, in which a selected large underground structure is analyzed. The results show that this revised method has higher efficiency than the traditional method thanks to the revision of the earthquake inertia force.