• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.163-180
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• 2009

In the design of tall reinforced concrete (R/C) buildings, the serviceability stiffness criteria in terms of maximum lateral displacement and inter-story drift must be satisfied to prevent large second-order P-delta effects. To accurately assess the lateral deflection and stiffness of tall R/C structures, cracked members in these structures need to be identified and their effective member flexural stiffness determined. In addition, the implementation of the geometric nonlinearity in the analysis can be significant for an accurate prediction of lateral deflection of the structure, particularly in the case of tall R/C building under lateral loading. It can therefore be important to consider the cracking effect together with the geometric nonlinearity in the analysis in order to obtain more accurate results. In the present study, a computer program based on the iterative procedure has been developed for the three dimensional analysis of reinforced concrete frames with cracked beam and column elements. Probability-based effective stiffness model is used for the effective flexural stiffness of a cracked member. In the analysis, the geometric nonlinearity due to the interaction of axial force and bending moment and the displacements of joints are also taken into account. The analytical procedure has been demonstrated through the application of R/C frame examples in which its accuracy and efficiency in comparison with experimental and other analytical results are verified. The effectiveness of the analytical procedure is also illustrated through a practical four story R/C frame example. The iterative procedure provides equally good and consistent prediction of lateral deflection and effective flexural member stiffness. The proposed analytical procedure is efficient from the viewpoints of computational effort and convergence rate.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.6
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• pp.675-684
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• 2020

An innovative retrofit method using pre-stressed steel strips and externally-bonded steel plates was presented in this paper. With the aim of exploring the seismic performance of the retrofitted RC interior joints, four 1/2-scale retrofitted joint specimens together with one control specimen were designed and subjected to constant axial compression and cyclic loading, with the main test parameters being the volume of steel strips and the existence of externally-bonded steel plates. The damage mechanism, force-displacement hysteretic response, force-displacement envelop curve, energy dissipation and displacement ductility ratio were analyzed to investigate the cyclic behavior of the retrofitted joints. The test results indicated that all the test specimens suffered a typical shear failure at the joint core, and the application of externally-bonded steel plates and that of pre-stressed steel strips could effectively increase the lateral capacity and deformability of the deficient RC interior joints, respectively. The best cyclic behavior could be found in the deficient RC interior joint retrofitted using both externally-bonded steel plates and pre-stressed steel strips due to the increased lateral capacity, displacement ductility and energy dissipation. Finally, based on the test results and the softened strut and tie model, a theoretical model for determining the shear capacity of the retrofitted specimens was proposed and validated.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.37-47
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• 2004

In this study the load distribution and settlement of soil nailed-drilled shafts subjected to axial loads were evaluated by a load-transfer approach. Special attention was given to the reinforcing effects of soil nails placed from the shafts to surrounding weathered- and soft-rocks based on an analytical study and a numerical analysis. An analytical method that takes into account the number, the positions on the shaft, the grade, and the inclination angle at which the soil nails are placed was developed using a load transfer curve methods. Through the comparative study, it is found that the prediction by present approach simulates well the general trends observed by the in-situ measurements and numerical results SHAFT 4.0. It is also found that the reinforcing effects of soil nails increases in the order of hard-, soft- and weathered-rock since the ultimate shaft resistance far large bored piles in weathered rocks is fully mobilized after small displacements of the shaft, compared to the soft- and hard-rocks and subsequently the side resistance is transferred down to the soil nails.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.411-433
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• 2013

Due to its easy operation and wide applicability, the ambient vibration method is commonly adopted to determine the cable force by first identifying the cable frequencies from the vibration signals. With given vibration length and flexural rigidity, an analytical or empirical formula is then used with these cable frequencies to calculate the cable force. It is, however, usually difficult to decide the two required parameters, especially the vibration length due to uncertain boundary constraints. To tackle this problem, a new concept of combining the modal frequencies and mode shape ratios is fully explored in this study for developing an accurate method merely based on ambient vibration measurements. A simply supported beam model with an axial tension is adopted and the effective vibration length of cable is then independently determined based on the mode shape ratios identified from the synchronized measurements. With the effective vibration length obtained and the identified modal frequencies, the cable force and flexural rigidity can then be solved using simple linear regression techniques. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method is extensively verified with demonstrative numerical examples and actual applications to different cable-stayed bridges. Furthermore, several important issues in engineering practice such as the number of sensors and selection of modes are also thoroughly investigated.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.123-133
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• 2006

The main objective of this study is to develop an optimization algorithm of framed structures with rigid and various semi-rigid connections using the multilevel dynamic programming and the sequential unconstrained minimization techniques (SUMT). The second-order elastic analysis is performed for steel framed structures. The second order elastic analysis is developed based on nonlinear beam-column theory considering the bowing effect. The following semi-rigid connections are considered; double web angle, top-seat angle and top-seat angle with web angle. We considered the three connection models, such as modified exponential, polynomial and three parameter model. The total weight of the structural steel is used as the objective function in the optimization process. The dimensions of steel cross section are selected as the design variables. The design constraints consist of strength requirements for axial, shear and flexural resistance and serviceability requirements.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.81-92
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• 2008

Generally the connection of members is defined as hinge or rigid. But, real joints on structure have to be considered semi-rigid connections because this permits relative rotation for members on joints. The purpose of this study is to derive a generalized tangential stiffness matrix of frames with semi-rigid connections and to develop a buckling analysis program. For the exact stiffness matrix, an accurate displacement field is introduced using an equilibrium equation for beam-columns under the bending and axial forces. Also, stability functions that consider sway deformation and force-displacement relations with rotational spring on ends were defined. In order to illustrate the accuracy of this study and the characteristics of semi-rigid for system buckling load, samples of angle-, portal- and 3-story frames with semi-rigid connections are presented, where the proposed approach is found to be in excellent agreement with other research results. Meanwhile, the application of codes such as Eurocode 3 and LRFD led to significant inaccuracies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.483-492
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• 2007

Pre-Engineering Building (PEB) system is one of the most economical structural systems. Tapered members can resist a maximum stress at a single location, whereas stresses of the rest of the members are considerably low. This results in appreciable savings both in terms of materials and construction costs. However, it was appreciated that special consideration would be required for certain aspects of this structural form. In particular, because of their slenderness, webs would buckle laterally and torsionally under the combined action of excessive axial, bending and shear forces. In this study, a total of four large-scale rafters with simple ends were tested. The main parameters were the width-thickness ratio of the web, the stiffener, and the flange brace. The purpose of this experiment is to evaluate the structural stability and to offer back-data on PEB design.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.561-578
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• 2010

This study proposes a multi-level damage localization strategy to achieve an effective damage detection system for civil infrastructure systems based on wireless sensors. The proposed system is designed for use of distributed computation in a wireless sensor network (WSN). Modal identification is achieved using the frequency-domain decomposition (FDD) method and the peak-picking technique. The ASH (angle-between-string-and-horizon) and AS (axial strain) flexibility-based methods are employed for identifying and localizing damage. Fundamentally, the multi-level damage localization strategy does not activate all of the sensor nodes in the network at once. Instead, relatively few sensors are used to perform coarse-grained damage localization; if damage is detected, only those sensors in the potentially damaged regions are incrementally added to the network to perform finer-grained damage localization. In this way, many nodes are able to remain asleep for part or all of the multi-level interrogations, and thus the total energy cost is reduced considerably. In addition, a novel distributed computing strategy is also proposed to reduce the energy consumed in a sensor node, which distributes modal identification and damage detection tasks across a WSN and only allows small amount of useful intermediate results to be transmitted wirelessly. Computations are first performed on each leaf node independently, and the aggregated information is transmitted to one cluster head in each cluster. A second stage of computations are performed on each cluster head, and the identified operational deflection shapes and natural frequencies are transmitted to the base station of the WSN. The damage indicators are extracted at the base station. The proposed strategy yields a WSN-based SHM system which can effectively and automatically identify and localize damage, and is efficient in energy usage. The proposed strategy is validated using two illustrative numerical simulations and experimental validation is performed using a cantilevered beam.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.457-472
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• 2021

Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Taiwan have suffered failure from strong earthquakes, which was magnified by the non-ductile detailing frames. Inadequate reinforcement as a consequence of the design philosophy prior to the introduction of current standards resulted in severe damage in the column and beam-column joint (BCJ). This study establishes a finite element analysis (FEA) of the non-ductile detailing RC column, BCJ, and three-story building that was previously tested through a tri-axial shaking table test. The results were then validated to laboratory specimens having the exact same dimensions and properties. FEA simulation integrates the concrete damage plasticity model and the elastic-perfectly plastic model for steel. The load-displacement responses of the column and BCJ specimens obtained from FEA were in a reasonable agreement with the experimental curves. The resulting initial stiffness and maximum base shear were found to be a close approximation to the experimental results. Also, the findings of a dynamic analysis of the three-story building showed that the time-history data of acceleration and displacement correlated well with the shaking table test results. This indicates the FEA implementation can be effectively used to predict the RC frame performance and failure mode under seismic loads.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.6
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• pp.715-728
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• 2022

A new type of buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) with a longitudinally profiled steel plate working as the core (LPBRB) is proposed and experimentally investigated. Different from conventional BRBs with a constant thickness core, both stiffness and strength of the longitudinally profiled steel core along its longitudinal direction can change through itself variable thickness, thus the construction of LPBRB saves material and reduces the processing cost. Four full-scale component tests were conducted under quasi-static cyclic loading to evaluate the seismic performance of LPBRB. Three stiffening methods were used to improve the fatigue performance of LPBRBs, which were bolt-assembled T-shaped stiffening ribs, partly-welded stiffening ribs and stiffening segment without rib. The experimental results showed LPBRB specimens displayed stable hysteretic behavior and satisfactory seismic property. There was no instability or rupture until the axial ductility ratio achieved 11.0. Failure modes included the out-of-plane buckling of the stiffening part outside the restraining member and core plate fatigue fracture around the longitudinally profiled segment. The effect of the stiffening methods on the fatigue performance is discussed. The critical buckling load of longitudinally profiled segment is derived using Euler theory. The local bulging behavior of the outer steel tube is analyzed with an equivalent beam model. The design recommendations for LPBRB are presented finally.