Abstract
Past experience has shown that port structures are often susceptible to severe damage during major earthquakes. From field observation of 1995 Hyogo-ken Nambu earthquake, it is observed that the seismic behavior of port structures such as caisson-type quay walls shows significant variability due to the variation in soil properties. In this study, seismic response analyses using a two-dimensional FE mesh, representing a caisson-type quay wall located in Rokko Island, are performed to carry out the sensitivity analysis the seismic performance of the caisson-type quay wall. To investigate the effect of uncertainties of soil properties on the dynamic behavior of the quay wall, a tornado diagram is used. It has been found that the uncertainties in the friction angle of reclaimed soil contribute most to the variability of the residual displacement and inclined angle of the quay wall. In addition, a Monte Carlo simulation considering the variation in soil properties has revealed that taking into account the effect of geometrical nonlinearity by using a large deformation analysis makes it possible to rationally assess the seismic performance of port structures while infinitesimal deformation analyses can overestimate the effect of the variation in soil properties on the deformation of port structures during earthquakes.
