Prediction method for seismic responses of underground structures in shaking table tests

The large-scale shaking table tests on an underground structure embedded in soil need extremely high cost and long test period, and usually they can hardly be frequently conducted in a short time. In order to successfully conduct the tests, predicting their responses before the tests is meaningful. The fully-numerical prediction method has been widely applied in model tests, but sometimes the results may have a great error, especially under the strong non-linear condition. To improve the accuracy of the prediction, the method combining both the numerical analysis and the free-field shaking table tests is proposed to predict the seismic responses of underground model structures in shaking table tests. The method using the data of the free-field tests to estimate the parameters for the Integral Responses Displacement Method is firstly introduced. The seismic responses of underground model structures in shaking table tests are predicted using the proposed method and the traditional fully-numerical prediction method. The predicted results are then compared with those by the subsequent tests. It is shown that the accuracy of the predicted results by the proposed method is greatly improved compared with that by the traditional fully numerical method. The proposed method can be used to qualitatively predict the seismic responses of underground structures in shaking table tests and further improve the design of the subsequent tests. © 2021, Editorial Office of Chinese Journal of Geotechnical Engineering. All right reserved.