• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.6
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• pp.643-657
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• 2020

This study presents experimental and numerical investigations on circular steel tube confined ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) columns under axial compression. The plain UHPC without fibers was designed to achieve a compressive strength ranged between 150 MPa and 200 MPa. Test results revealed that loading on only the UHPC core can generate a significant confinement effect for the UHPC core, thus leading to an increase in both strength and ductility of columns, and restricting the inherent brittleness of unconfined UHPC. All tested columns failed by shear plane failure of the UHPC core, this causes a softening stage in the axial load versus axial strain curves. In addition, an increase in the steel tube thickness or the confinement index was found to increase the strength and ductility enhancement and to reduce the magnitude of the loss of load capacity. Besides, steel tube with higher yield strength can improve the post-peak behavior. Based on the test results, the load contribution of the steel tube and the concrete core to the total load was examined. It was found that no significant confinement effect can be developed before the peak load, while the ductility of post-peak stage is mainly affected by the degree of the confinement effect. A finite element model (FEM) was also constructed in ABAQUS software to validate the test results. The effect of bond strength between the steel tube and the UHPC core was also investigated through the change of friction coefficient in FEM. Furthermore, the mechanism of circular steel tube confined UHPC columns was examined using the established FEM. Based on the results of FEM, the confining pressures along the height of each modeled column were shown. Furthermore, the interaction between the steel tube and the UHPC core was displayed through the slip length and shear stresses between two surfaces of two materials.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.391-407
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• 2017

Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bars have been recently used to reinforce concrete members in flexure due to their high tensile strength and especially in corrosive environments to improve the durability of concrete structures. However, FRPs have a low modulus of elasticity and a linear elastic behavior up to rupture, thus reinforced concrete (RC) components with such materials would exhibit a less ductility in comparison with steel reinforcement at the similar members. There were several studies showed the behavior of concrete beams with the hybrid combination of steel and FRP longitudinal reinforcement by adopting the experimental and numerical programs. The current study presents a numerical and analytical investigation based on the data of previous researches. Three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) models of beams by using ANSYS are built and investigated. In addition, this study also discusses on the design methods for hybrid FRP-steel beams in terms of ultimate moment capacity, load-deflection response, crack width, and ductility. The effects of the reinforcement ratio, concrete compressive strength, arrangement of reinforcement, and the length of FRP bars on the mechanical performance of hybrid beams are considered as a parametric study by means of FE method. The results obtained from this study are compared and verified with the experimental and numerical data of the literature. This study provides insight into the mechanical performances of hybrid FRP-steel RC beams, builds the reliable FE models which can be used to predict the structural behavior of hybrid RC beams, offers a rational design method together with an useful database to evaluate the ductility for concrete beams with the combination of FRP and steel reinforcement, and motivates the further development in the future research by applying parametric study.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.35-44
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• 2017

In this study, steel fiber-reinforced concrete beams with ordinary steel reinforcements, that are below minimum steel reinforcement amount specified in domestic concrete structure design code, were tested in flexure until failure. Steel reinforcement ratio considered were 44%, 66%, 78% and 100% of the minimum steel reinforcement. Considered steel fiber volume fractions were 0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75% and 1.00%. In results, it is confirmed that steel fibers greatly improve crack performance. Also, the steel fibers contributed to increment in yield load not in ultimate load. But the increment was not greater than the reduction by steel reinforcement reduction. The use of steel fibers in RC beams lightly reinforced below the minimum reinforcement ratio specified design code reduced ductility greatly. Consequently, steel reinforcement ratio in steel fiber-reinforced beams lightly reinforced below the minimum steel reinforcement should be increased in order to enhance proper ductility.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.108-115
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• 2020

In this study, the flexural performance of Highly Ductile Cement Composites(HDCC) mimicking boundary conditions of shellfish skin layer was evaluated. To improve ductility by mimicking the boundary skin layer structure of shellfish, the method of stratification by charging between precast panels using HDCC and the method of distributing PE-mesh to the interface surface were applied. Evaluation of flexural performance of layered cement composite materials mimicking boundary conditions of shellfish skin layer resulted in increased ductility of all test specimens applied with stratified cross-section compared to typical bending test specimens. The layered method by inserting PE-mesh showed excellent ductility. This is most likely because the inserted PE-mesh made an interface for separating the layers while the HDCC pillars in the PE-mesh gave adhesion between layers.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.347-355
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• 2021

During the earthquake, for multi-story structure, if the first floor is soft, the deformation will concentrate on that floor causing a serious damage to the column members which might leads to the collapse of the whole structure like Piloti structure during the Pohang earthquake in Korea. According to the 2016 National Disaster Management Research Institute's "Investigation of Seismic Reinforcement and Cost Analysis of Domestic Non-seismic Buildings", the rate of seismic resistance of private reinforced concrete buildings was 38.3 %. Among them, it was reported that the seismic-resistance ratio of the two to five-story structures was less than 50 %. Accordingly, the government is trying to improve the seismic rate through support projects, but the conventional seismic reinforcement methods are still expensive, and emergency construction is difficult. Therefore, in this study, the field applicability was evaluated by improving the reinforcement method using Velcro, which was developed through the research project of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs in 2014. In order to improve the performance of the Velcro reinforcement method, introducing the initial tension of Velcro using high foaming rigid urethane filling between the Velcro and concrete of the columns was applied. Additionally, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the ductility of Velcro specimen from the concrete confinement effect. As a result, the ductility of the Velcro specimen was improved compare to Normal specimen. However, the energy dissipation capacity of VELCRO2 is better than VELCRO1, yet the maximum ductility of those two specimens did not show a significant difference. Therefore, the improvement of the internal filler material is still needed to have a better maximum ductility.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.75-83
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• 2003

The ultimate goal of this research is to improve highway system performance in earthquakes by evaluating the effectiveness of retrofitting bridges with column jacketing. The objective of the study is to determine if steel jacketing increases the ductility capacity of bridge columns and hence improves the fragility characteristics of the bridge. Analytical fragility curves are used to adjust the empirical fragility curves obtained for the unretrofitted bridges using seismic damage data collected following past earthquakes. The adjustment was carried out by increasing the median values of the empirical curves through comparison with the median values of the corresponding fragility curves obtained analytically, both before and after being retrofit.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.101-112
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• 1999

Structural walls have been mostly used for the design of reinforced concrete buildings in seismic areas because they play a role as an efficient bracing system and offer great potential for lateral load resistance and drift control. The lateral resistance system for the earthquake load should be designed to have enough ductility and stable hysteretic response in the critical regions where plastic deformation occurred beyond yielding. The behavior of the reinforced concrete element to experience large deformation in the critical areas by a major earthquake is affected by the performance of the confined core concrete. Thus, the confinement of concrete by suitable arrangements of transverse reinforcement results in a significant increase in both the strength and ductility of compressed concrete. This paper reports the experimental results of reinforced concrete structural walls for wall-type apartment structure under axial loads and cyclic reversal of lateral loads with different confinement of the boundary elements. The results show that confinement of the boundary element by open 'U'-bar and cross tie is effective. The shear strength capacity is not increased by the confinement but deformation capacity is improve.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.285-302
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• 2017

Buckling-restrained braced frames (BRBFs) are commonly used as the lateral force-resisting systems in building structures in the seismic regions. The nearly-symmetric hysteretic response and the delayed brace core fracture of buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) under the axial cyclic loading provide the adequate lateral force and deformation capacity to BRBFs under the earthquake excitation. However, the smaller axial stiffness of BRBs result in the undesirable higher residual drift response of BRBFs in the post-earthquake scenario. Two alternative approaches are investigated in this study to improve the elastic axial stiffness of BRBs, namely, (i) by shortening the yielding cores of BRBs; and (ii) by reducing the BRB assemblies and adding the elastic brace segments in series. In order to obtain the limiting yielding core lengths of BRBs, a modified approach based on Coffin-Manson relationship and the higher mode compression buckling criteria has been proposed in this study. Both non-linear static and dynamic analyses are carried out to analytically evaluate the seismic response of BRBFs fitted with short-core BRBs of two medium-rise building frames. Analysis results showed that the proposed brace systems are effective in reducing the inter-story and residual drift response of braced frames without any significant change in the story shear and the displacement ductility demands.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.391-404
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• 2003

Local reinforcement in dowel type timber joints is essential to improve ductility, to increase load carrying capacity and to reduce the risk of brittle failure, especially in the case of using solid dowel. In many types of reinforcing materials available today, DVW (densified veneer wood) has been demonstrated to be the most advantages in terms of compatibility, embedding performance and ductility. Preliminary studies show that using appropriately sized DVW discs bonded into the timber interfaces may be an effective way to reinforce the connection. In this paper, non-linear 3-dimensional finite element models, incorporating orthotropic and non-linear material behaviour, have been developed to simulate structural performance of the timber joints locally reinforced by DVW discs. Different contact algorithms were applied to simulate contact conditions in the joints. The models were validated by the corresponding structural tests. Correlation between the experimental results and the finite element simulations is reasonably good. Using validated finite element models, parametric studies were undertaken to investigate effects of the DVW disc sizes and the end distances on shear stresses and normal stresses in a possible failure plane in the joint.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2016

The strength and stiffness of the steel beams to concrete-filled tubular columns connections are significantly reduced if the thick-walled components are used. However, the thick-walled tubes used for columns can largely reduce the demand for space and increase the strength-to-weight ratio. This paper describes the cyclic performance of extended through-diaphragm connections between steel beams and thick-walled concrete-filled tubular columns improved with fillets around the diaphragm corners. Test on one full-scale connection was conducted to assess the seismic behavior of the connection in terms of strength, stiffness, ductility, deformation, energy dissipation, and strain distribution. It is shown that the fillets and extended through-diaphragm can alleviate the stress concentration in the connection and thus improve the seismic performance. The test results demonstrate that the through-diaphragm connections with thick-walled concrete-filled tubular columns can offer sufficient energy dissipation capacity and ductility appropriate for its potential application in seismic design.