Application of Neural Networks to the Seismic Analysis of Structures

Joo Bento, Divine Ndumu and Joaquim Dias

Department of Civil Engineering, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Portugal
Department of Built Environment, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

ABSTRACT
The potential for the use of neural networks in engineering activities has been prompted and
progressively illustrated by several authors in the recent past and is currently emerging as a
main concern for many of the groups involved in AI research specifically related to structural
engineering, earthquake engineering and engineering seismology applications.
This paper describes some of the early steps of such an effort aimed at exploring the use of
neural networks for classification and prediction problems in seismic analysis and design of
structures.
INTRODUCTION
The modelling of the mechanical behaviour of structures has undergone a process of great
maturation throughout the last few decades, especially with the advent of universal access to
computational power.
One could describe most of the attained advances either theoretical, experimental or
computational as physical in a broad sense, given the attempt they all encompass of modelling
a (physical) reality by describing the associated (physical) phenomena using a set of
representational tools of a physical nature. In the case of structures, the emphasis has been in
the mimicking of the phenomena itself through their governing mechanical laws.
However, this line of physical modelling of structures faces a number of bottlenecks, namely
associated with computational inefficiency. A typical of such problems is the modelling of large
structures subjected to an earthquake loading described through an accelerogram.
TRADITIONAL MODELLING STRATEGIES
An usual, though sophisticated, form of structural modelling under earthquake loading is the
iterative integration of the set of differential equations which establish equilibrium under
dynamic conditions, usually referred to as equation of motion (eq. 1).
M u (t ) + CT u ( t) + KT u ( t) = P( t)

(1)

in which u(t), u (t) and u(t) are, respectively, the vectors of nodal acceleration, velocity and
displacement at instant t; M denotes the mass matrix, CT represents the tangent matrix of
damping and KT that of stiffness, both at instant t, while P(t) is the vector of external equivalent
forces.
It is well known that there are, basically, two different approaches to the solution of the
equation of dynamic equilibrium (eq. 1): its direct integration or the simplified use of modal
superimposition methods.
In order to enable the direct integration of eq.1, it is necessary to subdivide the time domain in
a number of finite intervals of duration t. Equation 1 develops, hence, to the following form:
M u + CT u + KT u = P

(2)

The integration of the system of equations above may be attempted by explicit o r implicit
methods, as explained elsewhere (Clough and Penzien, 1993). If an explicit method is adopted,
the response at time ti+1 may be defined by establishing equilibrium at time ti, i.e. (eq. 2) needs
to be solved once per time step. If, contrarily, an implicit method is to be used, then it is
necessary to define a rule of variation for the acceleration and, therefore, velocity and
displacements in each time step. Consequently, the solution at time ti+1 depends on the values of
u(t), u (t) and u(t), but also of the contemporaneous values at time ti+1. It is therefore likely
that equation 2 need to be solved iteratively until the adopted values of acceleration enable
equilibrium.
If the earthquake to which the structural model is to be analysed is represented, as it often
happens, by a ground motion record, such as the one of Figure 1, the chosen time step (usually
constant) for the iterative resolution of the system of equations (2) implies that the
accelerogram be described by finite steps of acceleration. That system of equations may,
therefore, be solved in order to satisfy the prescribed conditions of dynamic equilibrium for
every time interval under consideration, once per interval for explicit methods or more than that
for implicit ones.
This system of equations is formed by as many equations as the number of degrees of freedom
(dof) established by the model. In a typical situation of a buildings model resorting to 3D bar
elements, one may achieve as many as a few thousand dof. One needs, therefore, to compute
all the values of the increment of displacement u in each time step as well as the increment of
velocity u and acceleration u .
300
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100
0
0

10

15

20

-100
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Figure 1 - Typical accelerogram

In order to do that it is necessary to deploy adequate models of sectional behaviour under
cyclic loading of the structural elements involved. Such necessity requires sophisticated
modelling abilities to take into account the various physical phenomena known to constrain this

process such as the history of loading, geometrical non-linearity, plasticity, fatigue, cracking,
local buckling, etc.
The most usual approaches to this problem are either the use of simplified models for the
overall sectional behaviour e.g. the Takeda model (Takeda, Sozen and Nielsen, 1970) or the
use of section discretization models e.g. fibre ones in which the section is divided in a
number of smaller parts (usually, in the order of hundreds of fibres). For each generic fibre a
constitutive relation must then be defined in a way that sufficiently reflects the influence of
each of the above mentioned mechanical phenomena (Figure 2 and Figure 3).
nf

nl

Acn

y cn

i
As

yce

nf

ys

i
A ce

Figure 2 - Fibre model for a general rectangular reinforced concrete section (R. Bento, 1996)
s
A

Es

kfc

Q (sQ ,0)
D

s
0,2 k fc

C (sQ,- )

z k fc

Ec1

Eco
Ec1

Eco

ft Eco

E co

kco

E co

Ec1
Eco

c2o

cmax 1,05cmax

Figure 3 - Constitutive relations for steel and concrete fibres (R. Bento, 1996)
It results rather obvious that the use of such fibre models with section discretizations and
constitutive relations like the ones illustrated above, introduce a reasonably heavy
computational effort, certainly much heavier than that required by simplified models. Indeed,
the use of the latter models for the overall section behaviour may reduce the number of
computations involved so drastically that it may affect the actual possibility of trivially using
the former for modelling real structures.
COMPUTATIONAL EFFORT
Let us focus on the following simple exercise of computing the approximate number of times
the description of a fibres constitutive relation herein after referred to as a constitutive cycle
needs to be accessed for a trivial building model with 500 bar elements analysed for a 20s
earthquake using an explicit formulation:
no. of elements: 500 => 1000 sections
duration of accelerogram: 20 s
time step: 0.01 s

no. of fibres per section: 100

From the above values, one may conclude that the full analysis procedure would require
2000 = 20s/0,01s. Since each time step requires the computation of all the generalized
displacements in each node and that they can be computed at once in every constitutive cycle,
one needs to analize each section and, therefore, each fibre, that many times. Hence, the total
number of constitutive cycles becomes
1000 sections x 100 fibres x 2000 time steps = 2 x 108 .
It results obvious, then, that the use of a simplified modelling tool such as, for example, the
Takeda model, would reduce by the number of section fibres the order of constitutive cycles. In
the present particular example, a 100 times reduction would represent less 198 million
constitutive cycles, a reduction impressive enough to justify the present attempt. It is noted that
those figures may increase in the case of implicit methods of integration.
SIMPLIFIED MODELLING WITH NON-SIMPLIFIED QUALITY
The obvious main problem with the use of simplified sectional models is the lost of modelling
quality arising from the adopted simplifications. The best trade-off would therefore be one that
could invoke the modelling characteristics of non-simplified models simultaneously with the
computational efficiency of the simplified ones. In this paper, a non-physical modelling
approach based on artificial neural networks is introduced as a possible solution to that tradeoff. Indeed, artificial neural networks, once properly trained, are able of levels of computational
efficiency in representing mechanical behaviour that, in some cases, clearly overwhelms the
traditional ones provided by computational or theoretical mechanics, for equivalent
computational workload.
The ultimate objective of the work now described is to make available trained neural networks
able of predicting the hysteretic behaviour of structural elements.
The reason why such objective seems attainable is mostly related to the fact that it is rather
easy to accept that there is a well established pattern of graphical characteristics in the
hysteretic diagrams of somehow related sections. For example figures 5 and 6 represent
experimental histeretic F- diagrams for steel columns of different characteristics, while Figure
4 (a) and (b) illustrate sets of envelops of M- numerically generated diagrams for two
different families of sections. There are obvious similarities among the hollow rectangular
steel sections of figure 5 as well as among the I-shaped ones of figur 6 or, for example among
all the RC beams 4(b) or all the RC columns 4(a), just to mention a few.
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200

-0.1

-0.08

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0
-0.15

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0
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0.05

0.1

0.15

-400

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-600
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-400

-500

(a)

-800

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(b)
Figure 4 - Numerically generated hysteretic diagram for RC sections (a) column; (b) beam.

0.1

Figure 5 - Hysteretic diagrams for steel rectangular hollow sections (ECCS, 1986)

Figure 6 - Experimental hysteretic diagrams for steel I-shaped sections (ECCS, 1986)
ADOPTED APPROACH
The prediction of hysteretic behaviour should enable the quick computation of, for example, a,
moment given a curvature (or a displacement given a force) taking into account the history of

loading and all the aforementioned physical phenomena involved. Figure 7 illustrates that
process:
400

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Mi
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0
-0.08

-0.06

-0.04

-0.02

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

-100

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Figure 7 - Prediction of hysteretic behaviour

Since it is no viable to train different networks for each possibly different section, it is
necessary to train predictive networks for entire families of sections.
A pre-condition to the solution of the prediction problem is that different families of sections
may be distinguishable, as a pre-processing activity. In other words, the fact that a network
might eventually distinguish between different families of sections reinforces the suggestion
that there should be a possibility of predicting the hysteretic behaviour within a family of
sections.
The present paper refers, therefore, to those two different tasks: 1) the initial pre-processing
process by describing how it is possible to train artificial neural networks for discriminating
between relatively similar sections, with only a few given examples; 2) the exploration of a
number of solutions to the prediction problem.
DISCRIMINATION OF SECTIONS
The problem at hand is, therefore, that of training feedforward backpropagation networks for
the discrimination of sections or section properties of structural elements, resorting to records of
hysteretic behaviour produced either experimentally by means of cyclic tests, for example
of different types of steel, composite and reinforced concrete cantilever columns or resorting to
numerically generated diagrams.
Several approaches have been pursued to describe the several diagrams used to train the
network: 1) the description of the hysteretic (force vs. displacement or moment vs. curvature)
diagrams by vectors of pairs of co-ordinate points of the contour of the diagram (Figure 8c) or

2) the more dense description of the hysteretic diagrams by means of bitmaps containing the
full graphical description of the diagrams (Figure 9c). Since the former leads to immensely
lighter networks and that its training revealed relatively simple, it became the privileged form
of description of the diagrams. Indeed, as seen in Figure 8c, only 10 co-ordinate points have
been used (experiments with richer descriptions revealed no significant gain for discrimination).
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(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 8 - (a) Full numerical diagram, (b) contour and (c) simplified discrete contour
description.

(a)

(c)
Figure 9 - (a) Full experimental diagram; (b) discrete contour; (c) heavy bitmap description.
Several architectures and learning algorithms have been tested, but the use of a 20x40x1
multi-layered network trained resorting to standard backpropagation has shown satisfactory
results. In such a network, the 20 input units correspond to the x and y co-ordinates (M, ) of
the 10 contour points for each diagram, while the single output unit defines the section class.
29 different sections belonging to different section classes have been used. The three classes,
referred to a RC beam with varying b/h ratio, and two families of RC columns - squared and
rectangular sections with varying dimensions . Members of these classes have been classified
numerically with values of 0.1, 0.5 and 0.9. Among the 29 cases, 6 were left aside for testing of
the generalization capabilities of the trained network. The various experimented networks
converged during training under 500 epochs, with a marginal residual error.
The results of the classification problem are summarized by Figure 10, were it may be seen
that the sections left aside for testing were correctly classified.

0.9

0.8

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0.5

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0.3

training data
test data

0.2

0.1
0

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Figure 10 - Training and test classifications

Other experiments have been attempted with radial basis and recurrent networks but with no
major impact on the discriminating capacities of the trained networks (Bento and Ndumu,
1996).
PREDICTION OF HYSTERETIC BEHAVIOUR OF SECTIONS
Once established that families of sections have an identifiable pattern at developing hysteretic
behaviour, it seemed reasonable to attempt the training of networks to predict such behaviour
for whole families of sections. For that purpose, the present attempt, did not consider full
hysteretic diagrams, but rather a simplification of these, based on the 10 point contour
description used for the previous problem. Moreover, before embarking on the training of
networks capable of predicting behaviour in all sections of a given family, it was decided to
concentrate on various diagrams of a single family of sections. Such is the exploratory exercise
described herein after.
It is reasonable to expect that a given position in a hysteretic diagram, say (M0 , 0 ) be highly
dependent on the section properties and, no less than that, on the previous observed value of
(M, ). Therefore, a network trained to perform this task should take that into account. In other
words, the input for such a network at time ti should consist of information about the section
under consideration and the previous values of the hysteretic diagram, i.e. the output of the
network at time ti-1.
There are several forms of achieving this effect. A first one is the use of time-delay networks
(Lapedes and Farber, 1987). In this case, each point in the hysteretic diagram (Xn , Yn ) would be
defined as a function of the section properties P (physical, geometrical, etc.) and the immediate
previous point in the diagram:
(Xn , Yn ) = f(P, Xn-1, Yn-1)

(3)

An equivalent strategy would consist on the judicious use of normal backpropagation.

Indeed, if the properties of a number of sections are denoted by P1, P2, etc., it is possible to
train a normal backpropagation network to achieve the same effect. For example, if using a
3xNx2 network with the following data
Input
P1,0,0
P1,x1(1),y1(1)
P1,x1(2),y1(2)
...
P1,x1(n),y1(n)
P2,0,0
P2,x2(1),y2(1)
P2,x2(2),y2(2)
...
P2,x2(n),y2(n)

Output
x1(1),y1(1)
x1(2),y1(2)
x1(3),y1(3)
....
x1(1),y1(1)
x2(1),y2(1)
x2(2),y2(2)
x2(3),y2(3)
...
x2(1),y2(1)

where the x(i),y(i) are the x-y points for each curve, the above strategy corresponds to a one
step delay.
The later approach has been attempted with an arquitecture of 3x10x10x2, in which the first of
3 input units represents a symbolic description of the section properties. Indeed, the use of a set
of real properties, would merely increase the number of input units; the remaining 2 inputs are,
obviously, the co-ordinates of the previous point in the hysteretic diagram.
The results, although corresponding to an oversimplified version of the real diagrams and
trained with non-real sectional properties, have shown an interesting potential, as described in
figures 11(a)-(i), in which very good agreement may be found between original and predicted
diagrams.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

(i)

Figure 11 - Prediction of sectional behaviour using simplified diagrams

CONCLUSIONS
Artificial neural networks have been invoked as a possible tool to enable the more efficient
modelling (from a computational point of view) of sectional behaviour under cyclic loading in
order to enable the consideration of richer sectional models within step by step seismic analysis
of structures, at a reasonable computational cost.
Some very encouraging practical results are described and a methodology for the use of neural
networks in similar applications is put forward.
The results achieved so far enable to predict that some of the computationally heavy effort
associated to step by step non-linear analysis of structures subjected to earthquake loading may
eventually be replaced by much faster and equally reliable neural networks trained to resemble
the sectional behaviour under cyclic loading.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The ideas included in the present paper have benefited from interesting discussions with Profs.
Joo Azevedo, Rita Bento and Lus Guerreiro and others in the Earthquake Engineering group
at the IC/IST. It has also been partly funded by a research grant from the Portuguese agency for
R&D under project JNICT PBICT/P/CEG/2380/95.

REFERENCES
Bento, J.P., Ndumu, D., 1996: Application of Neural Networks to the Earthquake Resistant
Analysis of Structures, short contribution, EG-SEA-AI 3rd Workshop, Iain MacLeod (ed.),
111-112, Ross Priory, Scotland.
Bento, Rita, 1996: Avaliao do Comportamento Ssmico de Estruturas Porticadas de Beto
Armado: Uma Abordagem Baseada em ndices de Danos, PhD Thesis (in Portuguese),
Department of Civil Engineering, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Lisboa.
Clough, R.; Penzien, J. (1993) Dynamics of Structures, McGraw-Hill International Editions,
Singapore.
ECCS Technical research, 1986: Study on Design of Steel Building in Earthquake Zones,
ECCS, Brussels, Belgium.
Lapedes A. & Farber R., 1987: How Neural Networks Work Neural Information Processing
systems, ed D. Z. Anderson, 442-456, American Institute of Physics, New York
Takeda, T.; Sozen, M.; Nielsen, N., 1970 Reinforced Concrete Response to Simulated
Earthquakes, ASCE Journal of the Structural Division, N ST 12.