With their enormous power, earthquakes can cause substantial disaster to densely populated areas. Often the earthquake is accompanied by water impact loadings resulting from a tsunami, collapse of neighbouring structures and liquefaction of ground, or fire.

Today, new structures in earthquake sensitive areas are designed to sustain earthquakes without danger of damage or collapse.

But if the condition of the structure has been unidentifiably changed, eg. by damage to the structure, deterioration of materials or altered loading, then the effect on earthquake resistance may be significantly altered.

For many non-standard structures, a proper earthquake design requires a dynamic finite element analysis. For simple assessment, a linear analysis of the frequency domain may be sufficient. However, for other applications, the full nonlinear characteristics of possible failure mechanisms and interaction of the structure with ground and environment need to be considered in a nonlinear time stepping analysis.

DIANA offers solutions for both simple linear dynamic analysis, which can be applied to the design of structures, and also full nonlinear dynamic analysis taking into account the loading history of the structure.

For more information see our brochure