Keywords: integrated earthquake simulation, interoperability, industry foundation classes, sub-simulator, plug-in, numerical experiment.

Developing an integrated earthquake simulation (IES) has been motivated by the wide destructive damages that have been occurred in the event of major earthquakes: Northridge earthquake [1], U.S.A. 1994, and Kobe earthquake [2], Japan 1995, and the attempt to find answer for the question: "why does damage occur, after a wide amount of research work?"

In developing an integrated earthquake simulation two main numerical techniques are required: the first one is for simulating earthquake ground motion (EGM) and the second one is for modelling and analysis of structure under a given EGM. Those two requirements are representing earthquake causes and effects in the form of their employed numerical techniques. These numerical techniques have been named, here, sub-simulators because they are working under supervision of the IES simulation. In case of shaking a large scale domain (a complete city); however, decomposition technique has to be employed to decompose the large scale domain into domains. Earthquake causes would be represented in two main domains: underground soil structure (UGSS) and EGM domains. On the other hand, earthquake effects would be represented in domains of different structures which could be stroked by an earthquake: bridge piers, buildings, earth structures, pipelines...etc. By assigning sub-simulator for each domain, significant number of sub-simulators would be resulted; moreover, domains as well as inter-domain interactions are needed.

Authors have developed a kernel-based integrated earthquake simulation [3] that affords interaction among different sub-simulators based on Object-Oriented integration concepts which have been named simulation kernel. Kernel has structured architecture that enables not only smooth domains and inter-domain interactions but also flexible adding of domains to the simulation. Detailed explanation for kernel architecture is beyond the scope of this paper; however, brief description has been provided for integrity.

Conventional IES interacts with sub-simulator as a platform part in the simulation. In this conventional way, IES has to know input and output data format that are needed by sub-simulator and if domains sub-simulators have different data format, this is the usual, IES has to know the format for each sub-simulator. Moreover, if any sub-simulator has been replaced by another one that is giving same function but in more reliable or advanced state, IES does fail in interacting with the new sub-simulator unless it has the same data format of the replaced one. In case of manipulating large scale domain in its decomposed form, the aforementioned shortcomings have significant impact on efficiency and reliability of IES. However, if IES has been enabled to accept replacement of any sub-simulator by another one it would be able to accommodate new developments in the numerical techniques and afford the ability of using more reliable techniques. Accordingly, the problem statement here is to develop a technique that enables sub-simulator to work with the kernel-based IES as plug-in.

The methodology that has been used here is based on Industry Foundation Classes [4] which define an Object-Oriented standard data structure by which all IFC-compliant applications could interact smoothly and understand each other, i.e. they are achieving interoperability. Consequently, if IES became IFC-compliant it would be able to interact with all IFC-compliant applications and hence achieves interoperability. To address this task in an efficient way, three major stages have been accomplished: the first stage provides an interpretation for interoperability in IES and clarify the link with interoperability that is defined by IFC group, the second stage defines interoperability requirements in IES, and the third stage develops mature technique in interface part of simulation kernel to enable plug-in connectivity of sub-simulators based on the defined interoperability and its requirements and IFC. Numerical experiment has been conducted for part of Kobe city with (700x500[M]) domain size under different cases of input earthquake wave using multiprocessors computer architecture, eight node clusters, based on IFC data model objects for buildings and concrete piers in the domain. Spatial variations of ground motion and structural damage have been resulted taking into account effect of local site condition and incidence direction of earthquake wave.

1

Gates, W., Morden, M., "Lessons from Inspection, Evaluation, Repair and Construction", Report SAC 95-06, Sacramento, Dec. 1995.

2

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, "The Hyogoken-Nanbu Earthquake: Great Hanshin Earthquake Disaster, January 17, 1995; Preliminary Reconnaissance Report", Oakland, California, 1995.

3

Hassanien, M., Inoue, J., Ichimura, T., Hori, M. "Kernel-based Message Passing Interfaced Integrated Earthquake Simulation", Topping, B.H.V., (Editor), Proceedings of Tenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing, Civil-Comp Press, Stirling, 2005. doi:10.4203/ccp.81.227

4

International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI), Release 2x2 of IFC, 2003 http://cig.bre.co.uk/iai_international/ Technical_Documents/documentation

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