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A. Gerald Brady

Publications and source records attributed to A. Gerald Brady.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS1992

Desk-top model buildings for dynamic earthquake response demonstrations

Models of buildings that illustrate dynamic resonance behavior when excited by hand are designed and built. Two types of buildings are considered, one with columns stronger than floors, the other with columns weaker than floors. Combinations and variations of these two types are possible. Floor masses and column stiffnesses are chosen in order that the frequency of the second mode is approximately five cycles per second, so that first and second modes can be excited manually. The models are expected to be resonated by hand by schoolchildren or persons unfamiliar with the dynamic resonant response of tall buildings, to gain an understanding of structural behavior during earthquakes. Among other things, this experience will develop a level of confidence in the builder and experimenter should they be in a high-rise building during an earthquake, sensing both these resonances and other violent shaking.

Conference Paper↗
USGS1991

The Loma Prieta earthquake, ground motion, and damage in Oakland, Treasure Island, and San Francisco

The basis of this study is the acceleration, velocity, and displacement wave-forms of the Loma Prieta earthquake (18 October 1989; M = 7.0) at two rock sites in San Francisco, a rock site on Yerba Buena Island, an artificial-fill site on Treasure Island, and three sites in Oakland underlain by thick sections of poorly consolidated Pleistocene sediments. The waveforms at the three rock sites display a strong coherence, as do the three sedimentary sites in Oakland. The duration of strong motion at the rock sites is very brief, suggestive of an unusually short source duration for an earthquake of this size, while the records in Oakland show strong amplification effects due to site geology. The S -wave group at Treasure Island is phase coherent with the Oakland records, but at somewhat diminished amplitudes, until the steps in acceleration at approximately 15 sec, apparently signaling the onset of liquefaction. All seven records clearly show shear-wave first motion opposite to that expected for the mainshock radiation pattern and peak amplitudes greater than expected for sites at these distances (95 ± 3 km) from an earthquake of this magnitude. While the association between these ground motion records and related damage patterns in nearby areas has been easily and eagerly accepted by seismological and engineering observers of them, we have had some difficulty in making such relationships quantitative or even just clear. The three Oakland records, from sites that form a nearly equilateral triangle about the Cypress Street viaduct collapse, are dominated by a long-period resonance (≃ 1 1/2-sec period) far removed from the natural frequency of the structure to transverse motion (2.5 Hz) or from high-frequency amplification bands observed in aftershock studies. A spectral ratio arbiter of this discrepancy confuses it further. The failure of the East Bay crossing of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge cannot be attributed to relative displacements of the abutments in Oakland and Yerba Buena Island, but the motions of the Bay Bridge causing failure remain unknown. The steps in acceleration at Treasure Island present unusual strong-motion accelerogram processing problems, and modeling suggests that the velocity and displacement waveforms are contaminated by a spurious response of the filtering operations to the acceleration steps. A variety of coincidences suggests that the Treasure island accelerogram is the most likely strong-motion surrogate for the filled areas of the Marina District, for which no mainshock records are available, but the relative contributions of bad ground, poor construction and truly strong ground motion to damage in the Marina District will never by known in any quantitative way. The principal lesson of all of this is that until a concerted effort is mounted to instrument ground and structures that are likely to fail during earthquakes, our understanding of the very complex relationships between strong ground motion and earthquake damage will, in general, remain rudimentary, imprecise, and vague.

California↗
USGS1990

Initial overview of the San Francisco Bay and Santa Cruz mountains ground motion

The strong-motion accelerograms from the Loma Prieta earthquake are analyzed for their long-period content in order to obtain a clearer picture of the long-period wave propogation details. Shear waves having periods in the 3.5 to 4 sec, and 5 to 7 sec ranges travel across four groups of stations with satisfactory coherency. Displacement accuracies are of the order of 0.5 cm for most of this data, with signal amplitudes an order of magnitude higher than the noise. Resonances associated with shear waves of 1.5 sec period are responsible for about 3/4 of the differential displacement necessary to unseat the 15 m section of the Bay Bridge.

NIST Special Publication↗
USGS1989

Seismic response of a large-span roof diaphragm

Records obtained from the West Valley College Gymnasium in Saratoga, California during the 1984 Morgan Hill earthquake are used to study the dynamic behavior of the overall gymnasium as well as its flexible disaphragm. The ground-level motions recorded in the two orthogonal axes of the structure differ considerably in peak acceleration and amplify by approximately 1.5 times at the roof edges and by 4-5 times at the center of the diaphragm. The diaphragm responds with a frequency of approximately 4 Hz in both orthogonal axes. A simple finite-element model is used to match the fundamental frequency of the diaphragm with that from the records. Using this model and the ground-level motions as input, the diaphragm center displacements are calculated by varying the structural damping. Best comparisons are obtained for 5% damping. These results are discussed in terms of the code provisions.

Earthquake Spectra↗
USGS1988

The 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, California

The Whittier Narrows earthquake sequence (local magnitude, M L = 5.9), which caused over 358-million dollars damage, indicates that assessments of earthquake hazards in the Los Angeles metropolitan area may be underestimated. The sequence ruptured a previously unidentified thrust fault that may be part of a large system of thrust faults that extends across the entire east-west length of the northern margin of the Los Angeles basin. Peak horizontal accelerations from the main shock, which were measured at ground level and in structures, were as high as 0.6 g (where g is the acceleration of gravity at sea level) within 50 kilometers of the epicenter. The distribution of the modified Mercalli intensity VII reflects a broad north-south elongated zone of damage that is approximately centered on the main shock epicenter.

California↗
USGS1983

SOME NEW PROCESSING TECHNIQUES FOR THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 1979 AFTERSHOCKS.

This paper describes some of the features of the latest processing improvements that the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) is currently applying to strong-motion accelerograms from the national network of permanent stations. At the same time it introduces the application of this processing to the set of Imperial Valley aftershocks recorded following the main shock of October 15, 1979. Earlier processing of the 22 main shock recordings provided corrected accelerations, velocity and displacement, response spectra, and Fourier spectra.

Conference Paper↗
USGS1978

Strong-motion earthquake accelerograms digitization and analysis

This is the third of a series of reports planned to include the results of digitization and routine analyses of strong-motion earthquake accelerograms published by the U.S. Geological Survey. Serving as a model for this effort is the collection of data reports published by the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology during the years 1969 - 1975 and covering the significant records of the period from 133 up to the San Fernando earthquake of February 9, 1971. Earlier reports in the present series have covered the significant records of 1971 subsequent to San Fernando (Open file report No. 76-609) and Peru records from 1951 to 1974 (Open file report No. 77-587). The present report includes a selection of 1972 records.

Open-File Report↗
USGS1977

Strong-motion earthquake accelerograms digitization and analysis records from Lima, Peru, 1951 to 1974

This is the second of a series of reports planned to include the results of digitization and routine analyses of strong-motion earthquake accelerograms published by the U.S. Geological Survey. Serving as a model for this effort is the collection of data reports published by the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology during the years 1969 - 1975 and covering the significant records of the period from 1933 up to the San Fernando earthquake of February 9, 1971. The first of the present series of reports, Open File Report No. 76-609, covered the significant records of 1971 subsequent to the San Fernando earthquake. The present report includes the results of some ongoing work on Peru records.

Open-File Report↗