AITKEN PUBLIC LECTURE - Shaken but not stirred: using mathematics in earthquakes

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• Prof. Hinke Osinga, University of Auckland
• Wednesday 10 May 2017, 16:00-17:00
• MR2, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Prof. Julia Gog.

BOOKING REQUIRED: https://aitken-damtp.eventbrite.co.uk/

Earthquakes can cause substantial damage to buildings in ways that are still not well understood. The amplitude and principal frequency of an earthquake are two primary components that affect the extent of the damage, and they are the basis for many design specification guidelines. We investigate how an external force with varying amplitude and principal frequency affects structural stability. As an example we consider a model of a planar, post-tensioned frame that exhibits dynamics quite similar to the experimental measurements of a scaled model on a shake table. The frame remains structurally sound as long as the tilt angle of the frame does not exceed a certain maximum. Many results in the literature are obtained from performing a large number of simulations over a range of amplitudes and frequencies. Such a brute-force approach establishes a region in the frequency-amplitude plane for which the structural stability of the frame eventually fails. Our approach is much more efficient and uses a novel computational method that approximates the failure boundary directly. This method is based on continuation of a suitable two-point boundary value problem. Our computations demonstrate that the failure boundary is only piecewise smooth and the results highlight further interesting details of how the dynamics is organised in the frequency-amplitude plane. We find that failure can occur in profoundly different ways, due to inherent nonlinearities in the system. Stability is particularly affected in a nonlinear way if the natural frequency of the structure is close to that of the external forcing.

Booking required: https://aitken-damtp.eventbrite.co.uk/

This talk is part of Prof. Osinga’s tour as the Aitken Lecturer, which is awarded jointly by the LMS and the NZMS , more details can be found here: https://www.lms.ac.uk/events/lectures/forder-and-aitken-lectureship

This talk is part of the CMS Special Lectures series.

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