Seismic effects on large reinforced concrete lifelines—I. Theory

Abstract Large lifeline systems are susceptible to earthquake damage, and their performance and integrity during and after an earthquake have significant implications on public safety. Theoretical aspects for the subject are presented first, where general issues of simulated earthquakes, numerical modeling, computational aspects, system parameters, transfer furnctions and design spectra are discussed. Implementation of the proposed approach and the corresponding results are presented in part II.