• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.139-156
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• 1995

A set of field investigations was performed to estimate accurately the predominant periods of seismic 8round motions and the attenuation characteristics of the seismic ground vibration. Predominant periods of ground motions were estimated from the measurement of the continuous microseismic vibratins of certain periods, inherent in the ground and in the buildings, utilizing the high sensitivity digital velocity seismometer consisting of 3-component geophones and a digital seismograph. Estimated predominant periods of microseismic vibraion of the ground(measured on'the ground surface) and the building (measured on the second floor) were in the range of 0.18~0.235 sec. and 0.26~0.31 sec. respectively. The subsurface structure of the site ground was surveyed by the seismic refraction method utilizing the digital seismicwave probing system. The ground structure was found to be a two-layered system : an upper top soil layer of 7m in thickness with the P-wave velocity of 662m1sec and a lower layer of silty-clayey soils with the P -wave velocity of 2210m1 sec. The attenuation characteristics of the seismic ground vibrations were determined by the amplitude decay measurement method us;ng the Seisgun, which produces strong artificial seismic energy. Measured spatial attenuation coefficients of the ground vibration in vertical(Z) longitudinal(X), transverse(Y) direction were 0.1137, 0.0025, and 0.0290 respectively. Estimated Spartial QP's (inverse of the specific dissipation constant w.r.t. shear waved of X, Y, and Z directions were in the range of 5.913~7.575, 32.371~41.452, 2.794~3.579 re spectively. This indicates that aseimic design of the structures on the site should take stronger consideration regarding the earthquake resistance characteristics of the structures against longitudinal ground motion.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.355-362
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• 2009

Many of residential buildings, which have pilotis in lower stories to meet the architectural needs, are recently constructed in Korea. Usually, infill walls located in the upper stories of these buildings may cause a soft first story, which is very weak from the earthquake resistance. In the design of the buildings, the infill walls of upper stories are usually considered as non-structural elements and thus they are not included in the analytical model. However, the infill walls may affect the seismic behavior of the residential buildings. Therefore, the differences in seismic behaviors of RC buildings with and without masonry infill walls are required to be investigated. In this study, seismic fragility analyses were performed for masonry infilled low-rise RC moment-resisting frames. And seismic behaviors of RC moment-resisting frame with/without masonry infill walls were evaluated. Two types of structural system with the same frame and different allocation of infill walls are used to evaluate the influence of masonry infill walls on seismic behavior of RC moment-resisting frames. The infill walls were modeled as bi-equivalent diagonal struts. The fragility analyses show that the seismic performance of RC moment-resisting frames with soft story is below the desirable building seismic performance level recommended by current seismic codes, indicating high vulnerability of RC moment-resisting frames with soft story.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.517-524
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• 2014

The ultimate goal of seismic design is to reduce the probable losses or damages occurred during an expected earthquake event. To achieve this goal, this study represents a procedure that can estimate annual loss probability of a structure damaged by strong ground motion. First of all, probabilistic seismic performance assessment should be performed using seismic fragility analyses that are presented by a cumulative distribution function of the probability in each exceedance structural damage state. A seismic hazard curve is then derived from an annual frequency of exccedance per each ground motion intensity. An annual loss probability function is combined with seismic fragility analysis results and seismic hazard curves. In this paper, annual loss probabilities are estimated by the structural fragility curve of steel moment-resisting frames(SMRFs) in San Francisco Bay, USA, and are compared with loss estimation results obtained from the HAZUS methodology. It is investigated from the comparison that seismic losses of the SMRFs calculated from the HAZUS method are conservatively estimated. The procedure presented in this study could be effectively used for future studies related with structural seismic performance assessment and annual loss probability estimation.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.367-374
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• 2019

We investigate the effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI) on the response of LNG storage tanks to vertical seismic excitation depending on the type of foundation. An LNG storage tank with a diameter of 71 m on a clay layer with a thickness of 30 m upon bedrock, was selected as an example. The nonlinear behavior of the soil was considered in an equivalent linear method. Four types of foundation were considered, including shallow, piled raft, and pile foundations (surface and floating types). In addition, the effect of soil compaction within the group pile on the seismic response of the tank was investigated. KIESSI-3D, an analysis package in the frequency domain, was used to study the SSI and the stress in the outer tank was calculated. Based on an analysis of the numerical results, we arrived at three main conclusions: (1) for a shallow foundation, the vertical stress in the outer tank is less than the fixed base response due to the SSI effect; (2) for foundations supported by piles, the vertical stress can be greater than the fixed base stress due to the increase in the vertical impedance due to the piles and the decrease in radiation damping; and (3) soil compaction had a miniscule impact on the seismic response of the outer tank.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.5-16
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• 2020

Currently, the seismic design standards have been strengthened due to the occurrence of the Gyeongju and Pohang earthquake, and seismic performance evaluation of existing facilities is being conducted. It aims to secure a seismic performance effect during earthquakes by improving the micro-pile method, which can be constructed in limited confined places while minimizing damage to existing facilities. The improvement method is to construct all the piles in the square-tray-type plate on the top of the pile by constructing the slope pile in the form of an umbrella around the vertical pile, the main pillar. In this paper, the numerical analysis was performed to analyze the horizontal displacement behavior of an umbrella-type micropile for various real-measurement seismic waves in sandy soil. As a result of numerical analysis, the softer the ground, the better the effect of horizontal resistance of umbrella-type micropile. The horizontal displacement reduction effect was pronounced when the embedded depth was 15 m or more at the same ground strength, and it was found to be effective in earthquakes if it was settled on the ground with an N value of 30 or more. The embedded depth and horizontal displacement suppression effect of the micropile was proportional. Generally, the weaker the ground, the greater the displacement suppression effect. Umbrella-type micropile had a composite resistance effect in which the vertical pile resists the moment and inclined pile resists the axial force.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.483-491
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• 2008

There has been much focus on the strong axis steel moment connections after the Northridge earthquake in 1994. However, research studieson the seismic behavior of weak axis moment connections could be hardly found despite the fact that these connection details have been frequently used as seismic details of MRF in Korea. Therefore, the objective of this research is to provide better knowledge on the seismic behavior of weak-axis steel moment connections, which can be widely applicable to many structures with similar characteristics. For this purpose, an experimental program was designed and performed with twotypes of weak-axis steel moment connections, namely the bracket type and WUF-B type, based on the survey of existing field data and literatures. Using the experimental results obtained from the quasi-static cyclic testing of these specimens, structural performances of the joints such as hysteretic curves, maximum strength capacities and the strain of reinforced bars were investigated. From the test results, the bracket-type connection was shown to have more than a 5% story drift capacity, compared with the WUF-B type connection's 4%. These specimens were also shown to have higher strength capacities than the nominal design strength. The bracket-type connection showed a slow strength degradation after maximum strength was researched. However,the WUF-B type connection showed a rapid strength degradation that caused brittle behavior.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.276-284
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• 2019

Seismic research on bridges, dams and nuclear power plants, which are infrastructure in Korea, has been carried out since early on, but in the case of structures in thermal power plants, research is insufficient. In this study, a total of 192 dynamic analyzes were performed for 16 actual seismic waves and 12 PGAs. As a result, the probability of failure increased as the PGA value increased for each applied seismic wave, but it was different for each seismic wave. As a result, at 0.22G, the ratio of the compressive limit reached to the limit state was 25% and the ratio of the relative displacement reached the limit state was 13%. So, the probability of collapse due to compressive failure Is higher. Therefore, the fragility curve of the chimney which is the subject of this study can be used as a quantitative basis to determine the limit state of the target structure when an earthquake occurs and to be used for the safety design of the thermal power plants.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.48-56
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• 2021

Due to the recent earthquake that has occurred worldwide, interest in seismic reinforcement of structures is increasing. In order to improve the seismic performance of the structure, the seismic reinforcement of the column should be made. Various seismic retrofit methods are being developed to improve the seismic performance of columns. In this study, in order to improve the seismic performance of RC columns, an numerical study was conducted to evaluate the seismic performance of the columns by applying a surface constrained pressure. For the numerical study, the experimental study on the column was used, and the failure shape and behavior characteristics of the experimental results and the numerical results were compared. As a result of the numerical study, the ductile behavior of the RC columns occurred according to the strength of the surface constraining stress. In addition, ductile behavior occurred almost constant above a certain surface constrained pressure. Compared with the numerical results and the experimental results, he reinforcing effect of the used seismic reinforcement of the column in experimental study was compared with the value of the surface constrained pressure for the RC column, and the seismic reinforcing effect was examined as the surface constrained pressure value for the RC column. In conclusion, in this work, surface constrained stress and constrained strength for ductile behavior of RC columns are derived. Based on the results derived, it is believed that it can be used as basic data on the review of seismic design methods and seismic performance complementary effects using ductile behavior induction of RC columns.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.243-254
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• 2021

In this study, the conservatism of the response displacement method (RDM) for the seismic response analysis of box-shaped power cable tunnels was evaluated. A total of 50 examples were used considering the cross-sections of 25 power cable tunnels and two soil conditions for each power cable tunnel. The following three methods were applied for the analysis by the RDM: (1) single cosine method, (2) double cosine method, and (3) dynamic free-field analysis method. A refined dynamic analysis method considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) was employed to compare the conservatism of the RDM. The double cosine method demonstrated the most conservative result, while the dynamic free-field analysis method yielded the least deviation. The soil stiffness reduction factor, C, for the double cosine method was recommended to be 0.9 and 0.7 for the operational performance and collapse prevention levels, respectively, to ensure a probability of at least 80% that the member force by the RDM is larger than that of dynamic SSI analysis.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.33-40
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• 2023

The lateral load which is applied to the pile foundation supporting the superstructure during an earthquake is divided into the inertia force of the upper structure and the kinematic force of the ground. The inertia force and the kinematic force could cause failure to the pile foundation through different complex mechanisms. So it is necessary to predict and evaluate interaction of the ground-pile-structure properly for the seismic design of the foundation. The interaction is affected by the lateral behavior of the structure, the length of the pile, the boundary conditions of the head, and the relative density of the ground. Confining pressure and ground stiffness change accordingly when the relative density changes, and it results that the coefficient of subgrade reaction varies depending on each system. Horizontal bearing behavior and capacity of the pile foundation vary depending on lateral load condition and relative density of the sandy soil. Therefore, the 1g shaking table tests were conducted to confirm the effect of the relative density of the dried sandy soil to dynamic behavior of the group pile supporting the superstructure. The result shows that, as the relative density increases, maximum acceleration of the superstructure and the pile cap increases and decreases respectively, and the slope of the p-y curve of the pile decreases.