• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.467-476
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• 2016

For the connections between modular units in modular buildings, the bolted joints with connector plates are used commonly. The strength of structure is determined by the weakest part of structure and the connections may be weaker than the members being joined. Therefore, to check the safety of modular building, the structural performance of connections between modular units as well as that of beam-to-column connections should be evaluated. In this study, the behavior of module to module connection with straight and cross shaped connector plates is investigated by lateral cyclic tests according to KBC2009 0722.2.4 which shall be conducted by controlling the story drift angle in the width and the longitudinal direction respectively. All of test results generally show the stable ductile behavior up to 0.04rad drift levels and the tests in longitudinal direction show a superior energy dissipation per cycle in each of the load steps. However, the straight shaped connector plates have the degradation of stiffness with cyclic loading and the larger drift angle of column than the cross shaped connector plates.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.440-447
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• 2020

Masonry structures are used as bearing walls in small buildings, but they are generally considered non-bearing walls. They are used as partition walls that divide the interior spaces of the frame structures of buildings. In addition, wetting techniques that use mortar as an adhesive between blocks or bricks in construction are vulnerable to climatic conditions, especially cracks in mortar, which can cause conduction collapse of the walls in seismic loading. The purpose of this research was to propose a dry concrete block construction method that complements the weak axial shear stiffness and improves the weakness of the wet construction method as well as to investigate its structural behavior. In this study, the material properties of concrete blocks were examined, and the seismic performance of the proposed dry assembly structure was verified by structural behavior tests on horizontal cyclic loads. First, in these study results, concrete blocks can be applied to the dry block construction method instead of wet construction methods because they secure more than C-type blocks in KS regulations. Second, the structural performance of the wall against a horizontal cyclic load indicates that the resisting force of the assembly block wall is increased by increasing the horizontal length of the wall, forming several diagonal cracks. Finally, the proposed dry block wall structure requires a seismic performance assessment considering that the ratio of the shape of the wall by height and length is considered a major influence variable on the structural behavior under a horizontal load.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.519-530
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• 2013

Cyclic tests on modular building units for low-rise buildings composed of stud panels and a light-weight steel perimeter frame, were performed to evaluate the earthquake resistance such as stiffness, load-carrying capacity, ductility, and energy dissipation per load cycle. The strap-braced and sheeted stud panels were used as the primary lateral load-resistant element of the modular building units. Test results showed that the modular building units using the strap-braced and sheeted stud panels exhibited excellent post-yield ductile behaviors. The maximum drift ratios were greater than 5.37% and the displacement ductility ratios were greater than 5.76. However, the energy dissipation per load cycle was poor due to severe pinching during cyclic loading. Nominal strength, stiffness, and yield displacement of the modular building units were predicted based on plastic mechanisms. The predictions reasonably and conservatively correlated with the test results. However, the elastic stiffness of the strap-braced stud panel was significantly overestimated. For conservative design, the elastic stiffness of the strap-braced stud panel needs be decreased to 50% of the nominal value.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.511-521
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• 2015

The thermal bridge occurring in a building influences its thermal performance and durability. The domestic typical multi-unit residential buildings suffer thermal losses resulting from thermal bridges of the balcony slab. To minimize the thermal loss between inside and outside of the balcony slab, thermal bridge breaker(TBB) systems have been developed and applied in building construction. Although thermal bridge breaker systems for reinforced concrete(RC) wall-slab joints can improve the thermal performance of a building, it is necessary to verify the structural performance of TBB systems whether they provide proper resistance for cyclic loading. In order to investigate the structural characteristics of TBB systems embedded in RC slabs, cyclic tests of wall-slab joints were performed by applying two reversed cycles at each up to 30 cycles. The test results show that the RC slabs embedding TBBS systems can present excellent structural performance and the maximum moment capacity, energy dissipation capacity and ductility of TBBs systems are enhanced compared to those of the typical RC slabs.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.127-140
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• 2004

Conventional methods for the assessment of liquefaction potential were primarily for areas of severe earthquake zones (M=7.5) such as North America and Japan. Detailed earthquake related researches in Korea started in 1997, including development of the seismic design standards for port and harbour structures, which was later completed in 1999. Because most contents in the guidelines were quoted through literature reviews from North America and Japan, which are located in strong earthquake region, those are not proper in Korea, a moderate earthquake region. This requires further improvement of the present guidelines. Considering earthquake hazard data in Korea, use of laboratory tests based on irregular earthquake motion appears to be effective to reflect the dynamic characteristics of soil more realistically than those using simplified regular loading. In this study, cyclic triaxial tests using irregular earthquake motions are performed with different earthquake magnitudes, relative densities, and fines contents. Assessment of liquefaction potential in moderate earthquake regions is discussed based on various laboratory test results. Effects of these components on dynamic behavior of soils are discussed as well. From the test results, screening limits and magnitude scaling factors to determine the soil liquefaction resistance strength in seismic design were re-investigated and proposed using normalized maximum stress ratios under real irregular earthquake motions.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.482-490
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• 2013

Although the flat plate system is an efficient structural type due to the simplicity of its construction, the low story height, and the various plan design, the slab-column connections are vulnerable to punching shear failure from gravity load and eccentric shear failure from lateral load. To prevent the structure collapse, various construction methods of slab-column connection reinforcement are developed but none of these satisfies all of structural performance, economics, and constructability. This paper presents the reinforcement of slab-column connection with lattice bars. The structural performance is confirmed with the interior slab-column connection tests subjected to cyclic loading, and the economic feasibility is demonstrated from the structural design under the same condition with lattice bars, stud rails, and stirrups.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.323-339
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• 2020

In steel framed-tube structures (SFTSs), the plastic hinges at beam-ends cannot be adequately improved because of the large cross sections of spandrel beams, which results in the lower ductility and energy dissipation capacities of traditional SFTSs. To address this drawback, high-strength steel fabricated SFTSs with bolted web-connected replaceable shear links (HSFTS-SLs) have been proposed. In this system, shear links use conventional steel and are placed in the middle of the deep spandrel beams to act as energy dissipative components. In this study, 2/3-scaled HSFTS-SL specimens were fabricated, and cyclic loading tests were carried out to study the seismic performance of both specimens. The finite element models (FEMs) of the two specimens were established and the numerical results were compared with the test results. The results showed that the specimens had good ductility and energy dissipation capacities due to the reliable deformation capacities. The specimens presented the expected failure modes. Using a shorter shear link can provide a higher load-carrying capacity and initial elastic lateral stiffness but induces lower ductility and energy dissipation capacity in HSFTS-SLs. The performance of the specimens was comparable to that of the original sub-structure specimens after replacing shear links. Additionally, the expected post-earthquake recoverability and resilience of the structures could be achieved by replacing shear links. The acceptable residual interstory drift that allows for easy replacement of the bolted web-connected shear link was 0.23%. The bolted web-connected shear links had reliable hysteretic responses and deformation capacities. The connection rotation had a notable contribution to total link rotation. The results of the numerical analysis run for the proposed FEMs were consistent with the test results. It showed that the proposed FEMs could be used to investigate the seismic performance of the HSFTS-SL.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.137-143
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• 2016

The fifth wheel coupler is a heavy automotive coupling structure which connects a tractor and a trailer used for heavy-duty trucks widely. It is subjected to various loads simultaneously such as rolling, pitching and yawing loads as well as coupling frictional and impact loadings. Most of existing couplers have been overdesigned and, therefore, it is necessary to reduce the dead weight to increase the fuel efficiency. The topology optimization was applied in order to find conceptual layout designs which could show major load paths and ribs locations, and then the size structural optimization was performed in order to determine the heights and thicknesses of coupler ribs with the predetermined various loading conditions for the development of a new slim coupler with a minimum weight and high enough strength and stiffness. As the results of the topology optimum design, an efficient new coupling structure for truck trailers was designed. The weight of the new fifth wheel coupler was reduced by 4.9 %, compared with the existing one, even though all strength requirements were satisfied. The fatigue test of the new coupler was performed with cyclic vertical loads (+78.4 to +235.2 kN) and horizontal loads (-91.2 to +91.2 kN) simultaneously at 1 Hz and the life of 2,000,000 cycles were achieved without failure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.499-511
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• 2018

This paper aims to investigate the seismic performance of the prestressed steel strips retrofitted RC beam-column joints. Two series of joint specimens were conducted under compression load and reversed cyclic loading through quasi-static tests. Based on the test results, the seismic behavior of the strengthened joints specimens in terms of the failure modes, hysteresis response, bearing capacity, ductility, stiffness degradation, energy dissipation performance and damage level were focused. Moreover, the effects of the amount of the prestressed steel strips and the axial compression ratio on seismic performance of retrofitted specimens were analyzed. It was shown that the prestressed steel strips retrofitting method could significantly improve the seismic behavior of the RC joint because of the large confinement provided by prestressed steel strips in beam-column joints. The decrease of the spacing and the increase of the layer number of the prestressed steel strips could result in a better seismic performance of the retrofitted joint specimens. Moreover, increasing the axial compression ration could enhance the peak load, stiffness and the energy performance of the joint specimens. Furthermore, by comparison with the specimens reinforced with CFRP sheets, the specimens reinforced with prestressed steel strips was slightly better in seismic performance and cost-saving in material and labor. Therefore, this prestressed steel strips retrofitting method is quite helpful to enhance the seismic behavior of the RC beam-column joints with reducing the cost and engineering time.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.205-229
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• 2018

Energy induced by minor earthquake and micro vibration cannot be dissipated by traditional buckling-restrained braces (BRBs). To solve this problem, a new type of hybrid passive control device, named as VE-BRB, which is configured by a BRB with high-damping viscoelastic (VE) layers, is developed and studied. Theoretical analysis, performance tests, numerical simulation and case analysis are conducted to study the seismic behavior of VE-BRBs. The results indicate that the combination of hysteretic and damping devices lead to a multi-phased nature and good performance. VE-BRB's working state can be divided into three phases: before yielding of the steel core, VE layers provide sufficient damping ratio to mitigate minor vibrations; after yielding of the steel core, the steel's hysteretic deformations provide supplemental dissipative capacity for structures; after rupture of the steel core, VE layers are still able to work normally and provide multiple security assurance for structures. The simulation results agreed well with the experimental results, validating the finite element analysis method, constitutive models and the identified parameters. The comparison of the time history analysis on a 6-story frame with VE-BRBs and BRBs verified the advantages of VE-BRB for seismic protection of structures compared with traditional BRB. In general, VE-BRB had the potential to provide better control effect on structural displacement and shear in all stages than BRB as expected.