Practical Seismic Design I

Academic unit or major

Graduate major in Civil Engineering

Instructor(s)

Tomohiro Sasaki / Ikki Kato / Takahiro Tsutsumiuchi

Class Format

Lecture (Face-to-face)

Media-enhanced courses

-

Day of week/Period
(Classrooms)

7-8 Fri

Class

-

Course Code

CVE.A432

Number of credits

100

Course offered

2025

Offered quarter

2Q

Syllabus updated

Mar 19, 2025

Language

Japanese

Syllabus

Course overview and goals

In this course, students learn about seismic design of soil and underground structures based on previously learned structural mechanics and geotechnical engineering. First, the students study about damage of soil and underground structures during extreme earthquake disaster and understand its mechanism. The students also learn about mechanism of earthquake and characteristic of ground motions as well as design ground motions which is important for seismic design.
Next, the students learn about basic dynamics of soil (stress-dependent nonlinear and shear strain dependent nonlinear of soil, and their modeling), dynamics of the ground and characteristics of ground response at soft soil. In addition, the students also understand about the mechanism of liquefaction and its damage, and study numerical simulations of liquefaction.
Finally, exercises based on the contents of the above learning are performed. Through this exercise, deepen their understanding and acquire the knowledge necessary for seismic design of ground and underground structures.

Course description and aims

By the end of this course, each student will be able to:
1. Describe the mechanism of earthquake and its characteristics.
2. Understand dynamics of ground and characteristics of soft soil and evaluate seismic performance of soil and underground structures.
3. Describe the mechanism of liquefaction and its damage and design countermeasures for liquefaction.

Student learning outcomes

実務経験と講義内容との関連 (又は実践的教育内容)

The lecturer in charge of this course has plenty of experiences on design, construction and research in the construction company, so the students can learn the seismic engineering from the practical point of view.

Keywords

earthquake disaster, design ground motion, seismic design of soil and underground structure, dynamics of ground, liquefaction

Competencies

• Specialist skills
• Intercultural skills
• Communication skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Practical and/or problem-solving skills

Class flow

In the lecture, explain mainly the technical background of design standards and the parts not explicitly stated in standards, with actual damage cases and experiment examples.

Course schedule/Objectives

Study advice (preparation and review)

To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.

Textbook(s)

Lecture notes will be handed out in each lecture.

Reference books, course materials, etc.

Japan Society of Civil Engineers: Seismic design introduction to help you practice (in Japanese), ISBN978-4-8106-0731-4
Kazuhiko KAWASHIMA: Battle against earthquake – Why were the bridges vulnerable to earthquake? (in Japanese), ISBN978-4-306-02464-9
Kazuhiko KAWASHIMA: Earthquake Engineering (in Japanese), ISBN978-4-306-02497-7

Evaluation methods and criteria

Exercise (60%), Report (40%).

Related courses

• CVE.A433 ： Practical Seismic Design II

Prerequisites

None

Contact information (e-mail and phone) Notice : Please replace from ”[at]” to ”@”(half-width character).

SASAKI, Tomohiro sasaki.tomohiro[at]obayashi.co.jp
TSUTSUMIUCHI, Takahiro tsutsumiuchi.takahiro[at]obayashi.co.jp
KATO, Ikki kato.ikki[at]obayashi.co.jp

Office hours

After each class

Other

The site visit will be held. The details will be announced.