Influence of Blast-Induced Ground Motion on Dynamic Response of Masonry Minaret of Yörgüç Paşa Mosque

Abstract

This paper focuses on the dynamic response analysis of masonry minaret of Yörgüç Paşa Mosque subjected to artificially generated surface blast-induced ground motion by using a three-dimensional finite element model. The mosque is located in the town of Kavak of Samsun, in Turkey. This study intended to determine the ground motion acceleration values due to blast-induced ground motions (air-induced and direct-in-duced) calculated by a random method. In order to model blast-induced ground mo-tion, firstly, peak acceleration and the time envelope curve function of ground motion acceleration were obtained from the distance of the explosion center and the explo-sion charge weight and then blast-induced acceleration time history were estab-lished by using these factors. Non-stationary random process is presented as an ap-propriate method to be produced by the blast-induced ground motion model. As a representative of blast-induced ground motion, the software named BlastGM (Artifi-cial Generation of Blast-induced Ground Motion) was developed by authors to pre-dict ground motion acceleration values. Artificial acceleration values generated from the software depend on the charge weight and distance from the center of the explo-sion. According to the examination of synthetically generated acceleration values, it can be concluded that the explosions cause significant effective ground movements. In the paper, three-dimensional finite element model of the minaret was designed by ANSYS. Moreover, the maximum stresses and displacements of the minaret were in-vestigated. The results of this study indicate that the masonry minaret has been af-fected substantially by effects of blast-induced ground motion.