• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.205-214
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• 2010

Masonry structures have been used throughout the world for the construction of residential buildings. However, from a structural point of view, the masonry material is characterized by a very low tensile strength. Moreover, the bearing and shear capacity of masonry walls have been found to be vulnerable to earthquakes. In this study, to improve the seismic performance of masonry walls, hexagonal blocks were developed and six masonry walls made with hexagonal block were tested to failure under reversed cyclic lateral loading. This paper focuses on an experimental investigation of different types of wall with hexagonal blocks, i.e. walls with different hexagonal blocks and with different reinforcing bar arrangements, subjected to applied cyclic loads. The cracking, damage patterns and hysteretic feature were evaluated. Results from the hexagonal masonry wall were shown more damage reduction and less brittle failure in comparison to the existing rectangular masonry walls.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.37-46
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• 2012

In Korea, most existing school buildings have been constructed with moment frames with un-reinforced infill walls designed only considering gravity loads. Thus, the buildings may not perform satisfactorily during earthquakes expected in Korea. In exterior frames of the building, un-reinforced masonry infill walls with window openings are commonly placed, which may alter the structural behavior of adjacent columns due to the interaction between the wall and column. The objective of this study is to evaluate the seismic performance of existing school buildings according to the procedure specified in ATC 63. Analytical models are proposed to simulate the structural behavior of columns, infill walls and their interaction. The accuracy of the proposed model is verified by comparing the analytical results with the experimental test results for one bay frames with and without infill walls with openings. For seismic performance evaluation, three story buildings are considered as model frames located at sites having different soil conditions ($S_A$, $S_B$, $S_C$, $S_D$, $S_E$) in Korea. It is observed that columns behaves as a short columns governed by shear due to infill masonry walls with openings. The collapse probabilities of the frames under maximum considered earthquake ranges from 62.9 to 99.5 %, which far exceed the allowable value specified in ATC 63.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.341-349
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• 2016

Currently, researches are being actively conducted in assessing seismic performance of nuclear facilities in USA and Europe. In particular, applying this technique of assessing seismic performance to design of isolation systems in nuclear power plants is being performed and then ASCE 4 Draft (2013) is being revised accordingly in the United States. In order to satisfy the probabilistic performance objectives described by seismic responses with certain confidence levels (ASCE 43, 2005), the probability distributions of these responses have to be defined. What is the minimum number of input ground-motions to obtain the probability distribution precise enough to represent the unknown actual distribution? Theoretical basis, for how to determine the minimum number of input ground-motions for given a logarithmic standard deviation to approximate the unknown actual median of the log-normal distribution within a range of error at a certain level of confidence, is introduced by Huang et al. (2008). However, the relationship between the level of confidence and the range of error is not stated in the previous study. In this paper, based on careful reviews on the previous work, the relationship between the level of confidence and the range of error is logically and explicitly stated. Furthermore, this relationship is also applied to derive the minimum number of input ground-motions in order to approximate the unknown actual logarithmic standard deviation. Several recommendations are made for determining the minimum number of input ground-motions in probabilistic assessment on seismic performance of facilities in nuclear power plants.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.201-212
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• 2014

The plastic hinge region of RC pier ensures its nonlinear behavior during strong earthquake events. It is assumed that the piers secure sufficient strength and ductility in order to prevent the collapse of the bridge during strong earthquake. However, the presence of a lap-splice of longitudinal bars in the plastic hinge region may lead to the occurrence of early bond failure in the lap-splice zone and result in significant loss of the seismic performance. The current regulations for seismic performance evaluation limit the ultimate strain and displacement ductility considering the eventual presence of lap-splice, but do not consider the lap-splice length. In this study, seismic performance test and analysis are performed according to the cross-sectional size and the lap-splice length in the case of longitudinal bars with lap-splice located in the plastic hinge region of existing RC bridge columns with circular cross-section. The seismic behavioral characteristics of the piers are also analyzed. Based upon the results, this paper presents a more reasonable seismic performance evaluation method considering the lap-splice length and the cross-sectional size of the column.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.241-244
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• 2008

In general, RC flat plate frames have been used as a gravity load resisting system(GLRS) in building. This system should be constructed with lateral force resisting system(LFRS) such as shear walls and brace frames. When lateral loads such as earthquakes occur, LFRS undergo displacement by which connected gravity systems experience lateral displacement. Thus, flat plate system designed as GLRS should be predict unbalanced moments and punching failure due to lateral deformation. This study developed an analytical mode for predicting nonlinear behavior of RC slab column connection for the seismic performance evaluation of RC flat plate frames. For verifying the analytical model, the test results of two flat plate specimens having two continous spans with the difference gravity shear ratio($V_g/{\phi}V_c$) were compared with the results of analysis. The developed model can predict the failure modes and punching failures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.245-254
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• 2017

The building which are essential for disaster recovery is classified as a special seismic use group. Especially, achievement of seismic performance is very important for the hospital, so the hospital should be able to maintain its function during and right after an earthquake without significant damage on both structural and non-structural elements. Therefore, this study aimed at checking the seismic performance of a hospital building, but which was limited to structural elements. For the goal, a plan with a configuration of general hospitals in Korea was selected and designed by two different seismic-force-resisting systems. In analytical modeling, the shear behavior of the wall was represented by three inelastic properties as well as elastic. Nonlinear dynamic analyses were conducted to evaluate the performance of structural members. The result showed that the performance of shear walls in the hospital buildings was not satisfied regardless of the seismic-force-resisting systems, while the demands on the beams and columns did not exceed the capacities. This is the result of only considering the shear of the wall as the force-controlled action. When the shear of the wall was modeled as inelastic, the walls were yielded in shear, and as the result, the demands for frames were increased. However, the increase did not exceed the capacities of the frames members. Consequently, since the performance of walls is significant to determine the seismic performance of a hospital building, it will be essential to establish a definite method of modeling shear behavior of walls and judging their performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.110-115
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• 2014

It is crucial for important facilities to withstand strong earthquakes because their damage may cause undesirable socio-economic effect. A liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal is one of the lifeline facilities whose seismic safety needs to be guaranteed. Even though all operating LNG receiving terminals in Korea were seismically designed, old design codes do not guarantee to comply with the current seismic design codes. In addition, if the constructional materials have been deteriorated, the seismic capacity of facilities may be also deteriorated. Therefore, it is necessary that the seismic performance of LNG receiving terminals is evaluated and the facilities that lack of seismic capacity have to be rehabilitated. In this paper, a procedure of seismic performance evaluation of such facilities is developed such that the procedure consists of three phases, namely pre-analysis, analysis, and evaluation phases. In the pre-analysis phase, design documents are reviewed and walk-on inspection is performed to determine the current state of the material properties. In the analysis phase, a structural analysis under a given earthquake or a seismic effect is performed to determine the seismic response of the structure. In the evaluation phase, seismic performance of the structure is evaluated based on limit states. Two of the important facilities, i.e. the submerged combustion vaporizer (SMV) and pipe racks of one of the Korean LNG receiving terminals are selected and evaluated according to the developed procedure. Both of the facilities are safe under the design level earthquake.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.74-85
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• 2016

Seismic design of modular structures is usually carried out under the assumption that their load-carrying mechanism is similar to that of traditional steel moment-resisting frames(SMRFs). However, the load carry mechanism of modular structures would be different with that of traditional SMRFs because of their overlapped structural elements and complicated details of connections for the assembly of the unit-modules. In this study, nonlinear static analyses of 3 and 5-story prototype modular structures have been carried out with four different analytical models, which are established in consideration for the effects of overlapped elements and the hysteretic behavior of connections. Prototype structures present different lateral stiffness and strength depending on the modeling of overlapped elements and the rotational behavior of connections. For modular structures designed under assumption that overlapped structural elements are fully composite each other and connections between unit-modules are fixed, their lateral strength and stiffness can be over-estimated. Furthermore, it is known from the analysis results that modular structures with more than 3-stories would possess relatively low overstrength compared to traditional SMRFs.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.283-291
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• 2018

This study intends to develop an analytical model of unreinforced masonry(URM) walls for the nonlinear static analysis which has been generally used to evaluate the seismic performance of a building employing URM walls as seismic force-resisting members. The developed model consists of fiber elements used to capture the flexural behavior of an URM wall and a shear spring element implemented to predict its shear response. This paper first explains the configuration of the proposed model and describes how to determine the modeling parameters of fiber and shear spring elements based on the stress-strain curves obtained from existing experimental results of masonry prisms. The proposed model is then verified throughout the comparison of its nonlinear static analysis results with the experimental results of URM walls carried out by other researchers. The proposed model well captures the maximum strength, the initial stiffness, and their resulting load - displacement curves of the URM walls with reasonable resolution. Also, it is demonstrated that the analysis model is capable of predicting the failure modes of the URM walls.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.211-217
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• 2022

New buildings have been designed using different seismic design standards that have been revised. However, the seismic performance of existing buildings is evaluated through the same performance evaluation guidelines. Existing buildings may not satisfy the performance targets suggested in the current guidelines, but there are practical limitations to discriminating the existing buildings with poor seismic performance through a full investigation. In this regard, to classify buildings with poor seismic performance according to the applied standard, this study aimed to evaluate performance-based investigation of the seismic design proposals of buildings with different design standards. The target buildings were set as RC ordinary moment frames for office occupancy. Changes in seismic design criteria by period were analyzed, and the design spectrum changes of reinforced concrete ordinary moment resisting frames were compared to analyze the seismic load acting on the building during design. The seismic design plan was derived through structural analysis of the target model, compared the member force and cross-sectional performance, and a preliminary evaluation of the seismic performance was performed to analyze the performance level through DCR. As a result of the seismic performance analysis through the derived design, the reinforced concrete ordinary moment frame design based on AIK 2000 has an insufficient seismic performance level, so buildings built before 2005 are likely to need seismic reinforcement.