• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.935-956
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• 2015

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of steel towers has become a hot research topic. From the literature, it is impractical and impossible to develop a "general" method that can detect all kinds of damages for all types of structures. A practical method should make use of the characteristics of the type of structures and the kind of damages. This paper reports a feasibility study on the use of measured modal parameters for the detection of damaged braces of tower structures following the Bayesian probabilistic approach. A substructure-based structural model-updating scheme, which groups different parts of the target structure systematically and is specially designed for tower structures, is developed to identify the stiffness distributions of the target structure under the undamaged and possibly damaged conditions. By comparing the identified stiffness distributions, the damage locations and the corresponding damage extents can be detected. By following the Bayesian theory, the probability model of the uncertain parameters is derived. The most probable model of the steel tower can be obtained by maximizing the probability density function (PDF) of the model parameters. Experimental case studies were employed to verify the proposed method. The contributions of this paper are not only on the proposal of the substructure-based Bayesian model updating method but also on the verification of the proposed methodology through measured data from a scale model of transmission tower under laboratory conditions.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.739-756
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• 2015

This paper presents investigations on the hysteretic behavior of concrete-filled circular tubular (CFCT) T-joints subjected to axial cyclic loading at brace end. In the experimental study, four specimens are fabricated and tested. The chord members of the tested specimens are filled with concrete along their full length and the braces are hollow section. Failure modes and load-displacement hysteretic curves of all the specimens obtained from experimental tests are given and discussed. Some indicators, in terms of stiffness deterioration, strength deterioration, ductility and energy dissipation, are analyzed to assess the seismic performance of CFCT joints. Test results indicate that the failures are primarily caused by crack cutting through the chord wall, convex deformation on the chord surface near brace/chord intersection and crushing of the core concrete. Hysteretic curves of all the specimens are plump, and no obvious pinching phenomenon is found. The energy dissipation result shows that the inelastic deformation is the main energy dissipation mechanism. It is also found from experimental results that the CFCT joints show clear and steady stiffness deterioration with the increase of displacement after yielding. However, all the specimens do not perform significant strength deterioration before failure. The effect of joint geometric parameters ${\beta}$ and ${\gamma}$ of the four specimens on hysteretic performance is also discussed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-57
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• 2011

A deeper understanding of the effectiveness of adopting devices mounting shape memory alloy (SMA) elements in applications targeted to the mitigation of vibrations is pursued via an experimental approach. During a seismic event, less than 1000 loading-unloading cycles of the alloy are required to mitigate the earthquake effects. However, the aging effects during the time of inactivity prior to the oscillations (several decades characterized by the yearly summer-winter temperature wave) should be considered in order to avoid and/or minimize them. In this paper, the results obtained by carrying out, in different laboratories, fatigue tests on SMA specimens are compared and discussed. Furthermore, the effects of seismic events on a steel structure, with and without SMA dampers, are numerically simulated using ANSYS. Under an earthquake excitation, the SMA devices halve the oscillation amplitudes and show re-centering properties. To confirm this result, an experimental campaign is conducted by actually installing the proposed devices on a physical model of the structure and by evaluating their performance under different excitations induced by an actuator.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.3_4
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• pp.345-361
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• 2013

Locating and assessing the severity of damage in large or complex structures is one of the most challenging problems in the field of civil engineering. Considering that the wavelet packet transform (WPT) has the ability to clearly reflect the damage characteristics of structural response signals and the artificial neural network (ANN) is capable of learning in an unsupervised manner and of forming new classes when the structural exhibits change, this paper investigates a multi-stage structural damage diagnosis method by using the WPT and ANN based on "energy-damage" theory, in which, the wavelet packet component energies are first extracted to be damage sensitive feature and then adopted as input into an improved back propagation (BP) neural network model for damage diagnosis in a step by step mode. To validate the efficacy of the presented approach of the damage diagnosis, the benchmark structure of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is employed in the case study. The results of damage diagnosis indicate that the method herein is computationally efficient and is able to detect the existence of different damage patterns in the simulated experiment where minor, moderate and severe damages corresponds to involving in the loss of stiffness on braces or the removal bracing in various combinations.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.193-203
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• 2003

This paper highlights research being conducted to identify ground motion and structural characteristics that control the response of concentrically braced frames using hysteretic damper, unbonded brace, and to identify improved design procedures and code provisions. The focus of this paper is on the seismic response of six story concentrically braced frames utilizing hysteretic damper. A brief discussion is provided regarding the mechanical properties of such braces and the benefit of their use. Results of detailed nonlinear dynamic analyses are then examined for specific cases to characterize the effect on key response parameters of structural configurations and proportions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.549-558
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• 2007

Hook bolt brace is being used to construct pre-engineered building's (PEB) systematic frames in steel factory building, but they pose difficulties in terms of their structural performance. There are also few studies on their behavior and there is a need to develop elementary techniques by conducting loading tests on other types of braces (e.g., rod bar, rod shoe, angle), which is used in Japan and the USA. Its structural performance is compared with that of current hook bolt-type brace. Therefore, in this study, we present a basic step in the structural performance of these specimens to examine its performance qualitatively and theof application to PEB frames.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.229-234
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• 2019

This report introduces the structural design of Hibiya Mitsui Tower built in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya. The upper part of this tower is used for offices and the lower portion is for commercial facilities and a cinema complex which need the large open spaces. The 192m-high building has 35 floors above ground and 4 below ground. The structure is a steel frame using CFT columns to feature the high-performance oil dampers and the buckling restrained braces for vibration control. First, an outline of the structural design of this building is presented. Second, we introduce the transfer frame adopted to realize the large open spaces in the lower part, and the long column supporting the corner part of the high-rise building to avoid making a shade on the adjacent Hibiya Park, which are the feature of this building. Finally, we present an outline of the latest highly efficient semi-active oil dampers adopted in this building, and the vibration responses of this tower.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.3_4
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• pp.611-628
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• 2012

The inelastic earthquake response of existing, reinforced concrete buildings with an open ground story, designed according to the old Greek codes, is investigated before and after their seismic strengthening with steel braces restricted to the open ground stories. The seismic performance evaluation is based on Part 3 of Eurocode 8 for assessment and retrofitting of buildings. Three and five-story, symmetric and non-symmetric buildings are subjected to a set of seven pairs of synthetic accelerograms, compatible with the design spectrum, and conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of the strengthening solutions. Seismic behavior of the selected models confirms results of previous work regarding the insufficient capacity of the open ground stories for design level earthquakes. It is also shown that strengthening only the weak ground story, a choice having the substantial advantage of low cost and continued usage of the building during its seismic retrofitting, can remove the inherent weakness without shifting the problem to the stories above and thus making such buildings at least as strong as those without a weak first story. This partial strengthening is possible for symmetric as well as eccentric buildings, in which torsion plays a further detrimental role.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.311-325
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• 2008

Noting that damage occurrence of offshore jacket platforms is concentrated in two structural regions that are in the vicinity of still water surface and close to the seabed, a damage detection method by using only partial measurement of vibration in a suspect region was presented in this paper, which can not only locate damaged members but also evaluate damage severities. Then employing an experiment platform model under white-noise ground excitation by shaking table and using modal parameters of the first three modes identified by a scalar-type ARMA method on undamaged and damaged structures, the feasibility of the damage detection method was discussed. Modal parameters from eigenvalue analysis on the structural FEM model were also used to help the discussions. It is demonstrated that the damage detection algorithm is feasible on damage location and severity evaluation for broken slanted braces and it is robust against the errors of baseline FEM model to real structure when the principal errors is formed by difference of modal frequencies. It is also found that Z-value changes of modal shapes also play a role in the precise detection of damage.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.607-627
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• 2013

The application of shape memory alloys (SMAs) to the seismic response reduction of civil engineering structures has attracted growing interest due to their self-centering feature and excellent fatigue performance. The loading rate dependence of SMAs raises a concern in the seismic analysis of SMA-based devices. However, the implementation of micromechanics-based strain-rate-dependent constitutive models in structural analysis software is rather complicated and computationally demanding. This paper investigates the feasibility of replacing complex rate-dependent models with rate-independent constitutive models for superelastic SMA elements in seismic time-history analysis. Three uniaxial constitutive models for superelastic SMAs, including one rate-dependent thermomechanical model and two rate-independent phenomenological models, are considered in this comparative study. The pros and cons of the three nonlinear constitutive models are also discussed. A parametric study of single-degree-of-freedom systems with different initial periods and strength reduction factors is conducted to examine the effect of the three constitutive models on seismic simulations. Additionally, nonlinear time-history analyses of a three-story prototype steel frame building with special SMA-based damping braces are performed. Two suites of seismic records that correspond to frequent and design basis earthquakes are used as base excitations in the seismic analyses of steel-braced frames. The results of this study show that the rate-independent constitutive models, with their parameters properly tuned to dynamic test data, are able to predict the seismic responses of structures with SMA-based seismic response modification devices.