• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1-9
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• 2010

Most of shear wall structures require openings in shear walls and thus shear walls are linked by floor slabs or coupling beams resulting in the coupled shear wall structures. When these structures are subjected to seismic excitations, excessive shear forces are induced in coupling beams. Accordingly, brittle failure of coupling beams may occur or shear walls may yield first. To avoid this problem, damping devices can be installed in coupling beams. It can increase the vibration control effect and improve the seismic resistance performance of the coupled shear wall structure by avoiding stress concentration and the brittle failure of coupling beams. Based on this background research, an LRB (lead rubber bearing) was introduced in the middle of the coupling beam in this study and the authors investigated the seismic response control effect and stress distribution of the proposed system. To this end, a modeling technique that can effectively predict the structural behavior of coupled shear wall structures has been proposed. With this proposed technique, time history analyses of the example coupled shear wall structure subjected to seismic excitation were performed and the vibration control effects of the seismic responses were investigated.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.33-47
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• 2007

In a practical engineering, the equivalent static analysis (E.S.A) and the response spectrum analysis (R.S.A) are generally used for the seismic analysis. The base shears obtained from the E.S.A are invariable no matter how the principal axes of building structures are specified on an analysis program while those from the R.S.A are variable. Accordingly, the designed member size may be changed by how an engineer specify the principal axes of a structure when the R.S.A is used. Moreover, the base shears in the normal direction to the excitation axis are sometimes produced even when an engineer performs a response spectrum analysis in only one direction. This tendency makes the base shear, which is used to calculate the scale-up factor, relatively small. Therefore the scale-up factor becomes larger and it results in uneconomical member sizes. To overcome these disadvantages of the R.S.A, an alternative has been proposed in this study. Three types of example structures were adapted in this study, i.e. bi-direction symmetric structure, one-direction antisymmetric structure and bi-direction antisymmetric structure. The seismic analyses were performed by rotating the principal axes of the example structures with respect to the global coordinate system. The design member forces calculated with the scale-up factor used in the practice were compared with those obtained by using the scale-up factor proposed in this study. It can be seen from this study that the proposed method for the scale-up factor can provide reliable and economical results regardless of the orientation of the principal axes of the structures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.3 s.55
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• pp.53-62
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• 2007

This paper presents a new vibration control method for long-span bridges using complex damper system. The new system presents simple mechanical configuration with oil and elasto-plastic dampers which have velocity and displacement dependency in vibration energy absorbing. This system can produce various damping forces according to the applied external forces by the velocity and displacement-dependent characteristics of the dampers. The oil damper dissipates vibration energy for relatively frequent and small amplitude like in the case for small to moderate earthquakes, whereas the elasto-plastic damper system works for rare and large amplitude vibration such as high seismic excitation. Thus, the proposed system exhibits the advantage of low cost with high performance since the roles of the two different dampers are effectively separated. A numerical model is established for the complex damper system, and the response characteristics and effectiveness of the proposed system are presented through numerical simulations. Numerical results show that the proposed complex damper system can significantly improve the seismic performance of long-span bridge structures with much more effective damping mechanism than single conventional passive damper systems.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.373-384
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• 2000

To assess the safety of nonlinear steel frame structures subjected to short duration dynamic loadings, especially seismic loading, a nonlinear time domain reliability analysis procedure is proposed in the context of the stochastic finite element concept. In the proposed algorithm, the finite element formulation is combined with concepts of the response surface method, the first order reliability method, and the iterative linear interpolation scheme. This leads to the stochastic finite element concept. Actual earthquake loading time-histories are used to excite structures, enabling a realistic representation of the loading conditions. The assumed stress-based finite element formulation is used to increase its efficiency. The algorithm also has the potential to evaluate the risk associated with any linear or nonlinear structure that can be represented by a finite element algorithm subjected to seismic loading or any short duration dynamic loading. The algorithm is explained with help of an example and verified using the Monte Carlo simulation technique.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.483-498
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• 2017

Real-Time Hybrid Simulation (RTHS) is a powerful and cost-effective dynamic experimental technique. To implement a stable and accurate RTHS, time delay present in the experiment loop needs to be compensated. This delay is mostly introduced by servo-hydraulic actuator dynamics and can be reduced by applying appropriate compensators. Existing compensators have demonstrated effective performance in achieving good tracking performance. Most of them have been focused on their application in cases where the structure under investigation is subjected to inputs with relatively low frequency bandwidth such as earthquake excitations. To advance RTHS as an attractive technique for other engineering applications with broader excitation frequency, a discrete-time feedforward compensator is developed herein via various optimization techniques to enhance the performance of RTHS. The proposed compensator is unique as a discrete-time, model-based feedforward compensator. The feedforward control is chosen because it can substantially improve the reference tracking performance and speed when the plant dynamics is well-understood and modeled. The discrete-time formulation enables the use of inherently stable digital filters for compensator development, and avoids the error induced by continuous-time to discrete-time conversion during the compensator implementation in digital computer. This paper discusses the technical challenges in designing a discrete-time compensator, and proposes several optimal solutions to resolve these challenges. The effectiveness of compensators obtained via these optimal solutions is demonstrated through both numerical and experimental studies. Then, the proposed compensators have been successfully applied to RTHS tests. By comparing these results to results obtained using several existing feedforward compensators, the proposed compensator demonstrates superior performance in both time delay and Root-Mean-Square (RMS) error.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.229-237
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• 1996

In some current procedures, ground motions from different sources have been scaled by their peak ground accelerations and combined to obtain smoothed response spectra for specific regions. As consideration of the inelastic deformation capacity of structure, inelastic deformations are permitted under seismic ground excitation in all codes. In the ATC(Applied Technology Council) and UBC(Uniform Building Code), the inelastic design spectrum is obtained by reducing the elastic design spectrum by a factor that is independent of structural period. In this study, the average of nonlinear response spectra calculated from a sample of 20 records for each event are constructed to obtain the smoothed response spectra. These response spectra are used to examine the effects of structural strength factors such as the yield strength ratio and damping value. Through the regression analysis of nonlinear response of system for a given damping value and yield strength ratio, the required yield strength for seismic design can be estimated for a certain earthquake event. And a response modification coefficient depending on the natural period for current seismic design specifications are proposed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.453-469
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• 2011

A one-story, wooden-frame, intermediate-bay model with Dou-Gon designed according to the Building Standards of the Song Dynasty (A.D.960-1279), was tested on a unidirectional shaking table. The main objectives of this experimental study were to investigate the seismic performance of Chinese historic wooden structure under various base input intensities. El Centro wave (N-S), Taft wave and Lanzhou wave were selected as input excitations. 27 seismic geophones were instrumented to measure the real-time displacement, velocity and acceleration respectively. Dynamic characteristics, failure mode and hysteretic energy dissipation performance of the model are analyzed. Test results indicate that the nature period and damping ratio of the model increase with the increasing magnitude of earthquake excitation. The nature period of the model is within 0.5~0.6 s, the damping ratio is 3~4%. The maximum acceleration dynamic magnification factor is less than 1 and decreases as the input seismic power increases. The frictional slippage of Dou-Gon layers (corbel brackets) between beams and plates dissipates a certain amount of seismic energy, and so does the slippage between posts and plinths. The mortise-tenon joint of the timber frame dissipates most of the seismic energy. Therefore, it plays a significant part in shock absorption and isolation.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2011

Piles passing through sloping liquefiable deposits are prone to lateral loading if these deposits liquefy and flow during earthquakes. These lateral loads caused by the relative soil-pile movement will induce bending in the piles and may result in failure of the piles or excessive pile-head displacement. Whilst the weak nature of the flowing liquefied soil would suggest that only small loads would be exerted on the piles, it is known from case histories that piles do fail owing to the influence of laterally spreading soils. It will be shown, based on dynamic centrifuge test data, that dilatant behaviour of soil close to the pile is the major cause of these considerable transient lateral loads which are transferred to the pile. This paper reports the results of geotechnical centrifuge tests in which models of gently sloping liquefiable sand with pile foundations passing through them were subjected to earthquake excitation. The soil close to the pile was instrumented with pore-pressure transducers and contact stress cells in order to monitor the interaction between soil and pile and to track the soil stress state both upslope and downslope of the pile. The presence of instrumentation measuring pore-pressure and lateral stress close to the pile in the research described in this paper gives the opportunity to better study the soil stress state close to the pile and to compare the loads measured as being applied to the piles by the laterally spreading soils with those suggested by the JRA design code. This test data shows that lateral stresses much greater than one might expect from calculations based on the residual strength of liquefied soil may be applied to piles in flowing liquefied slopes owing to the dilative behaviour of the liquefied soil. It is shown at least for the particular geometry studied that the current JRA design code can be un-conservative by a factor of three for these dilation-affected transient lateral loads.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1027-1041
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• 2016

Different incident angles of ground motions have been considered to evaluate the relationship between floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient. The issues specifically addressed are (1) variability in torsional irregularity coefficient and floor rotations with varying incident angles of ground motion (2) contradictory relationship between floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient. To explore the stated issues, an evaluation based on relative variation in seismic response quantities of linear asymmetric structure under the influence of horizontal bi-directional excitation with varying seismic orientations has been carried out using response history analysis. Several typical earthquake records are applied to the structure to demonstrate the relative variations of floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient for different seismic orientations. It is demonstrated that (1) Torsional irregularity coefficient (TIC) increases as the story number decreases when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of the structure. For incident angles other than structure's reference axes, TIC either decreases as the story number decreases or there is no specific trend for TIC. Floor rotation increases in proportion to the story number when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of structure. For incident angles other than structure's reference axes, floor rotation either decreases as the story number increases or there is no specific trend for floor rotation and (2) TIC and floor rotation seems to be approximately inversely proportional to each other when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of the structure. For incident angles other than structure's reference axes, the relationship can even become directly proportional instead of inversely proportional.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.1
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• pp.33-47
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• 2020

In this paper the dynamic behavior of an isolated building subjected to idealized near-fault pulses is investigated. The building is represented with a simple 2-DOF model. Both linear and non-linear behavior of the isolation system is considered. Using dimensional analysis, in conjunction with closed form mathematical idealized pulses, appropriate dimensionless parameters are defined and self-similar curves are plotted on dimensionless graphs, based on which various conclusions are reached. In the linear case, the role of viscous damping is examined in detail and the existence of an optimum value of damping along with its significant variation with the number of half-cycles is shown. In the nonlinear case, where the behavior of the building depends on the amplitude of the excitation, the benefits of dimensional analysis are evident since the influence of the dimensionless 𝚷-terms is easily examined. Special consideration is given to the normalized strength of the non-linear isolation system that appears to play a complex role which greatly affects the response of the 2-DOF. In the last part of the paper, a comparison of the responses to idealized pulses between a linear fixed-base SDOF and the respective isolated 2-DOF with both linear and non-linear damping is conducted and it is shown that, under certain values of the superstructure and isolation system characteristics, the use of an isolation system can amplify both the normalized acceleration and displacement of the superstructure.