• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.679-702
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• 2013

During an earthquake, soils filter and send out the shaking to the building and simultaneously it has the role of bearing the building vibrations and transmitting them back to the ground. In other words, the ground and the building interact with each other. Hence, soil-structure interaction (SSI) is a key parameter that affects the performance of buildings during the earthquakes and is worth to be taken into consideration. Columns are one of the most crucial elements in RC buildings that play an important role in stability of the building and must be able to dissipate energy under seismic loads. Recent earthquakes showed that formation of plastic hinges in columns is still possible as a result of strong ground motion, despite the application of strong column-weak beam concept, as recommended by various design codes. Energy is dissipated through the plastic deformation of specific zones at the end of a member without affecting the rest of the structure. The formation of a plastic hinge in an RC column in regions that experience inelastic actions depends on the column details as well as soil-structure interaction (SSI). In this paper, 854 different scenarios have been analyzed by inelastic time-history analyses to predict the nonlinear behavior of RC columns considering soil-structure interaction (SSI). The effects of axial load, height over depth ratio, main period of soil and structure as well as different characteristics of earthquakes, are evaluated analytically by finite element methods and the results are compared with corresponding experimental data. Findings from this study provide a simple expression to estimate plastic hinge length of RC columns including soil-structure interaction.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1127-1146
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• 2015

The excitation angle or angle of incidence is the angle in which the horizontal seismic components are applied with respect to the principal structural axes during a time history analysis. In this study, numerical simulations and parametric studies are performed for the investigation of the effect of the angle of seismic incidence on the response of adjacent buildings, which may experience structural pounding during strong earthquakes due to insufficient or no separation distance between them. A specially developed software application has been used that implements a simple and efficient methodology, according to which buildings are modelled in three dimensions and potential impacts are simulated using a novel impact model that takes into account the arbitrary location of impacts and the geometry at the point of impact. Two typical multi-storey buildings and a set of earthquake records have been used in the performed analyses. The results of the conducted parametric studies reveal that it is very important to consider the arbitrary direction of the ground motion with respect to the structural axes of the simulated buildings, especially during pounding, since, in many cases, the detrimental effects of pounding become more pronounced for an excitation angle different from the commonly examined 0 or 90 degrees.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.425-438
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• 2007

Large changes in stiffness associated with cracking and yielding of reinforced concrete sections may be expected to occur during the dynamic response of reinforced concrete frames to earthquake ground shaking. These changes in stiffness in stories that experience cracking might be expected to cause relatively large peak interstory drift ratios. If so, accounting for such changes would add complexity to seismic design procedures. This study evaluates changes in an index parameter to establish whether this effect is significant. The index, known as the coefficient of distortion (COD), is defined as the ratio of peak interstory drift ratio and peak roof drift ratio. The sensitivity of the COD is evaluated statistically for five- and nine-story reinforced concrete frames having either uniform story heights or a tall first story. A suite of ten ground motion records was used; this suite was scaled to five intensity levels to cause varied degrees of damage to the concrete frame elements. Ground motion intensity was found to cause relatively small changes in mean CODs; the changes were most pronounced for changes in suite scale factor from 0.5 to 1 and from 1 to 4. While these changes were statistically significant in several cases, the magnitude of the change was sufficiently small that values of COD may be suggested for use in preliminary design that are independent of shaking intensity. Consequently, design limits on interstory drift ratio may be implemented by limiting the peak roof drift in preliminary design.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.263-275
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• 2015

This study presents conceptual information of newly optimized shapes and connectivity of the so-called outrigger truss system for modern tall buildings that resists lateral loads induced by wind and earthquake forces. In practice, the outrigger truss consists of triangular or Vierendeel types to stiffen tall buildings, and the decision of outrigger design has been qualitatively achieved by only engineers' experience and intuition, including information of structural behaviors, although outrigger shapes and the member's connectivity absolutely affect building stiffness, the input of material, construction ability and so on. Therefore the design of outrigger trusses needs to be measured and determined according to scientific proofs like reliable optimal design tools. In this study, at first the shape and connectivity of an outrigger truss system are visually evaluated by using a conceptual design tool of the classical topology optimization method, and then are quantitatively investigated with respect to a structural safety as stiffness, an economical aspect as material quantity, and construction characteristics as the number of member connection. Numerical applications are studied to verify the effectiveness of the proposed design process to generate a new shape and connectivity of the outrigger for both static and dynamic responses.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.329-348
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• 2011

Large-scale earthquakes pose serious threats to infrastructure causing substantial damage and large residual deformations. Superelastic (SE) Shape-Memory-Alloys (SMAs) are unique alloys with the ability to undergo large deformations, but can recover its original shape upon stress removal. The purpose of this research is to exploit this characteristic of SMAs such that concrete Beam-Column Joints (BCJs) reinforced with SMA bars at the plastic hinge region experience reduced residual deformation at the end of earthquakes. Another objective is to evaluate the seismic performance of SMA Reinforced Concrete BCJs repaired with flowable Structural-Repair-Concrete (SRC). A $\frac{3}{4}$-scale BCJ reinforced with SMA rebars in the plastic-hinge zone was tested under reversed cyclic loading, and subsequently repaired and retested. The joint was selected from an RC building located in the seismic region of western Canada. It was designed and detailed according to the NBCC 2005 and CSA A23.3-04 recommendations. The behaviour under reversed cyclic loading of the original and repaired joints, their load-storey drift, and energy dissipation ability were compared. The results demonstrate that SMA-RC BCJs are able to recover nearly all of their post-yield deformation, requiring a minimum amount of repair, even after a large earthquake, proving to be smart structural elements. It was also shown that the use of SRC to repair damaged BCJs can restore its full capacity.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.80-85
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• 2019

Generally, interlayer noise is measured in decibels (A) in terms of free field. In this paper, we propose a measurement method of interlayer vibration acceleration in the diffusion field perspective. The proposed method can represent a vibration-embodied formula similar to the sensitivity of earthquake intensity when the natural vibration of apartment house is measured by acceleration with its average value of $20mm/s^2$ represented by an the geometric progression of radix. Based on this theory, this paper proposes a method to show the optimal user experience (UX) by applying the interlayer vibration acceleration of the epicenter to the system of human - computer interaction (HCI).

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.77 no.4
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• pp.463-472
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• 2021

Fully rigid floor diaphragm is one of the main assumptions that are widely used in common practices due to its simple application. However, determining the exact degree of diaphragms flexibility cannot be easily accomplished without finite element modeling, which is an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Therefore, it is always possible that apparently rigid diaphragms, based on prescriptive limitations of seismic codes, experience some degrees of flexibility during the earthquakes. Since diaphragm flexibility has more uncertainties in asymmetric-plan structures, this study focuses on errors resulting from probable floor diaphragm flexibility of torsionally restrained structures. The analytical models used in this study were single-story buildings with asymmetric plan and RC shear walls. Although floor system is not considered explicitly, a wide range of considered diaphragm flexibility, from fully rigid to quite flexible, allows the results to be generalizable to a lot of lateral load resisting systems as well as floor systems. It has been shown that in addition to previously known effects of diaphragm flexibility, presence of orthogonal side elements during design procedure with rigid diaphragm assumption and rapid reduction in their absorbed forces can also be an important source to increase errors due to flexibility. Accordingly, from the obtained results the authors suggest designers to consider the possibility of diaphragm flexibility and its adverse effects, especially in torsionally restrained systems in their common designs.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.99-112
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• 2023

This paper investigates the influences of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) on the seismic behavior of two-dimensional reinforced concrete moment-resisting frames subjected to Far-Field Ground Motion (FFGM) and Near-Field Ground Motion (NFGM). For this purpose, the nonlinear modeling of 7, 10, and 15-story reinforced concrete moment resisting frames were developed in Open Systems for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OpenSees) software. Effects of SSI were studied by simulating Beam on Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) and the soil type as homogenous medium-dense. Generally, the building resistance to seismic loads can be explained in terms of Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA); therefore, IDA curves are presented in this study. For comparison, the fragility evaluation is subjected to NFGM and FFGM as proposed by Quantification of Building Seismic Performance Factors (FEMA P-695). The seismic performance of Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings with fixed and flexible foundations was evaluated to assess the probability of collapse. The results of this paper demonstrate that SSI and NFGM have significantly influenced the probability of failure of the RC frames. In particular, the flexible-base RC buildings experience higher Spectral acceleration (Sa) compared to the fixed-base ones subjected to FFGM and NFGM.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.4 s.44
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• pp.19-28
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• 2005

Long span structures with low natural frequencies such as shopping malls, large offices, and assembly rooms may experience signification dynamic responses due to human activities. In many cases, the group activities are common thing in comparison with the single activity. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the responses of building structure subjected to group human loads using mode shapes. For this purpose, equations to estimate the magnitudes ol responses ol structure subjected to group walking loads are derived. And the correlation of loads is verified for identifying the relation of each human load composing of group human loads using two load cells. The method is proposed for evaluating the responses of structure subjected to group loads using mode shapes and correlation function related to each human loads. The effectiveness ol the proposed method is verified analytically using a simple beam and floor and experimentally on a footbridge measuring the structural response induced by group pedestrians for the case of synchronization or not. Results indicate that the amplitudes of group walking loads can be easily estimated if the mode shapes are available, and that the corresponding structural responses can be estimated easily by the simple response measurement using the proposed method.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.1 s.47
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• pp.9-16
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• 2006

The design practice of the lateral resisting system has been traditionally dependent on the experience and know-how of a structural engineer. And the method to reflect the evaluation results of building's capacity on design process doesn't exist. The proposal of a rational design of the lateral load resisting system is based on the available full capacity $(R_{ac})$ of a building and the minimum required capacity $(R_{code})$ suggested in the code. This study suggests thai nonlinear static analysis, which is the estimation of the lateral capacity with the pushover analysis, be included in the existing design procedure of the structure. After finishing the basic structural design, the lateral resisting capacity ol a building is estimated. At the phase of nonlinear static analysis, pushover analysis is peformed to define the fully yielded baseshear $(V_Y)$. When the design wind baseshear $(V_{wind})$ is bigger than the design seismic baseshear $(V_D)$, the value is checked to determine whether or not it is smaller than the $V_Y$. After confirming that it is smaller, the $R_{ac}$ of the structure is computed. If the $V_D$ is bigger at first, only the $R_{ac}$ is computed. When the value of the estimation shows remarkable differences with the $R_{code}$, repetition of the design modification is needed for those approximate to the $R_{code}$. Application of the proposed design procedure to 2-D steel braced RC buildings has proven to be efficient.