Design displacement for lifelines at fault crossings: the code-based approach for Europe

The earthquake-resistant design of lifelines, such as pipelines, tunnels and bridges, is based on the reliable representation and estimation of the seismic loading. In the case of lifeline–fault crossings, the design fault displacement is typically derived from estimates based on fault dimensions via empirical fault scaling relations for a given “design” scenario event. This approach comes with an unknown level of safety because the fault productivity and the actual distribution of earthquake events are essentially disregarded. To overcome this challenge, a simplified approach is proposed by statistically analyzing the outcome of probabilistic fault displacement hazard analyses (PFDHAs). A selection of faults from the 2020 European Fault-Source Model is used to build the logic tree and to set the range of parameters considered in the PFDHAs. The methodology allows the (mostly conservative) approximation of the fault displacement corresponding to any given return period based on readily available data, namely fault productivity, fault mechanism, fault length, and lifeline crossing location on the fault. The proposed methodology has been proposed and adopted as an informative Annex in prEN 1998-4:2022.

Open access funding provided by HEAL-Link Greece. The current work has been partially undertaken in as part of the Horizon 2020 Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance in Europe (SERA, Grant Agreement No. 730900). The first and the second author have received partial funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme “METIS-Seismic Risk Assessment for Nuclear Safety” under Grant Agreement No. 945121 and also, the financial support provided by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “2nd Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty Members & Researchers”, Project “TwinCity—Climate-Aware Risk and Resilience Assessment of Urban Areas under Multiple Environmental Stressors via Multi-Tiered Digital City Twinning” (Number: 2515) is gratefully acknowledged.

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