SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF A SYSTEM OF INTERDEPENDENT LIFELINE AND INFRASTRUCTURE COMPONENTS

Abstract

The aim of this research is to develop a generic procedure for the assessment of the serviceability of a system (single system or system of systems) if one or more interacting components of the system are damaged by an earthquake. The system serviceability (functionality) is evaluated starting from the expected degree of damage of the single components (direct physical damage estimated using appropriate fragility functions) and accounting for their functional interaction (functional system architecture and single or by-directional interactions among components). Through the evaluation of the components’ non-functionality, the overall serviceability of the system is assessed, possibly in the form of a “system serviceability curve”, for different levels of seismic input intensity. Aleatory and epistemic uncertainties are treated using a Bayesian inference. The applicability of the proposed approach is established through an illustrative example. It is shown that the methodology is quite general and applicable to real systems with diverse degrees of complexity and knowledge of system and components details.