• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2007

Until recently Korea is considered to be immune from the earthquake hazard because it is located for away from the active fault. However, we have noticed that recent strong earthquakes inflicted enormous losses on human lives and nation's economy all over the world. Hence, there has been raised the importance of the earthquake resistant design for various infrastructures. In this research, new methodologies for the seismic design and performance assessment of reinforced concrete(RC) bridge pier were proposed from experimental results of 82 circular RC bridge piers and 54 rectangular RC bridge piers tested in domestic and aboard. New seismic design method was based on the concept of the limited ductile design, which could be practically used for low or moderate seismic regions like Korea. Further study for the seismic safety of RC bridge piers was carried out to enhance the seismic performance of aged RC bridge piers, which were designed and constructed before implementing the 1992 seismic design provision in Korea. New formula for the seismic performance assessment of RC bridge piers was proposed and practically used for the decision on the need of repair and retrofit of many aged RC bridge piers.

• Journal of Advanced Engineering and Technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2012

Large scale earthquake was occurred in different parts of the world like Japan (in 1995), Republic of Pakistan (2005), in China (2008) etc and enormous structures were damaged. As a result of collapse of school buildings structures numerous students are died and it had a big impact on the international community. Therefore, the interest of preparing the seismic resistant school building structures in our country is increases as school building are used as emergency shelter for local residents. But the current standard of seismic design ratio of 3.7% is applied for school building in Korea which is only significant earthquake damage is expected. In order to overcome the current situation, seismic performance evaluation is carried out for the existing school building and an accurate and appropriate seismic retrofit is required based on performance evaluation to upgrade the existing school buildings. In this paper, nonlinear analysis on existing school buildings for ATC-40(Applied Technology Council, ATC) and FEMA-356(Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) are carried out using the capacity spectrum method to evaluate seismic performance and to determine the need for retrofitting. In addition, after reinforcement to enhance the seismic performance is applied the seismic performance evaluation is carried out to verify the effectiveness of seismic retrofit.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.399-409
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• 2019

This paper presents the experimental investigations on the seismic performance of a peculiar steel-concrete vertical hybrid structural system referred to as steel truss-RC tubular column hybrid structure. It is typically applied as the supporting structural system to house air-cooled condensers in thermal power plants (TPPs). Firstly, pseudo-dynamic tests (PDTs) are performed on a scaled substructure to investigate the seismic performance of this hybrid structure under different hazard levels. The deformation performance, deterioration behavior and energy dissipation characteristics are analyzed. Then, a cyclic loading test is conducted after the final loading case of PDTs to verify the ultimate seismic resistant capacity of this hybrid structure. Finally, the failure mechanism is discussed through mechanical analysis based on the test results. The research results indicate that the steel truss-RC tubular column hybrid structure is an anti-seismic structural system with single-fortification line. RC tubular columns are the main energy dissipated components. The truss-to-column connections are the structural weak parts. In general, it has good ductile performance to satisfy the seismic design requirements in high-intensity earthquake regions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.791-818
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• 2015

RC buildings constitute the prevailing type of construction in earthquake-prone region like Kathmandu Valley. Most of these building constructions were based on conventional methods. In this context, the present paper studied the seismic behaviour of existing RC buildings in Kathmandu Valley. For this, four representative building structures with different design and construction, namely a building: (a) representing the non-engineered construction (RC1 and RC2) and (b) engineered construction (RC3 and RC4) has been selected for analysis. The dynamic properties of the case study building models are analyzed and the corresponding interaction with seismic action is studied by means of non-linear analyses. The structural response measures such as capacity curve, inter-storey drift and the effect of geometric non-linearities are evaluated for the two orthogonal directions. The effect of plan and vertical irregularity on the performance of the structures was studied by comparing the results of two engineered buildings. This was achieved through non-linear dynamic analysis with a synthetic earthquake subjected to X, Y and $45^{\circ}$ loading directions. The nature of the capacity curve represents the strong impact of the P-delta effect, leading to a reduction of the global lateral stiffness and reducing the strength of the structure. The non-engineered structures experience inter-storey drift demands higher than the engineered building models. Moreover, these buildings have very low lateral resistant, lesser the stiffness and limited ductility. Finally, a seismic safety assessment is performed based on the proposed drift limits. Result indicates that most of the existing buildings in Nepal exhibit inadequate seismic performance.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.447-470
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• 2014

Numerical simulation of the non-linear behavior of (RC) structural walls subjected to severe earthquake ground motions requires a reliable modeling approach that includes important material characteristics and behavioral response features. The objective of this paper is to optimize a simplified method for the assessment of the seismic response and damage development analyses of an RC structural wall building using macro-element model. The first stage of this study investigates effectiveness and ability of the macro-element model in predicting the flexural nonlinear response of the specimen based on previous experimental test results conducted in UCLA. The sensitivity of the predicted wall responses to changes in model parameters is also assessed. The macro-element model is next used to examine the dynamic behavior of the structural wall building-all the way from elastic behavior to global instability, by applying an approximate Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA), based on Uncoupled Modal Response History Analysis (UMRHA), setting up nonlinear single degree of freedom systems. Finally, the identification of the global stiffness decrease as a function of a damage variable is carried out by means of this simplified methodology. Responses are compared at various locations on the structural wall by conducting static and dynamic pushover analyses for accurate estimation of seismic performance of the structure using macro-element model. Results obtained with the numerical model for rectangular wall cross sections compare favorably with experimental responses for flexural capacity, stiffness, and deformability. Overall, the model is qualified for safety assessment and design of earthquake resistant structures with structural walls.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2018

Seismic retrofitting of existing buildings and design of earth-quake resistant buildings are important issues associated with earthquake-prone zones. Use of metallic-yielding dampers as an energy dissipation system is an acceptable method for controlling damages in structures and improving their seismic performance. In this study, the optimal distribution of dampers for reducing the seismic response of steel frames with multi-degrees freedom is presented utilizing the uniform distribution of deformations. This has been done in a way that, the final configuration of dampers in the frames lead to minimum weight while satisfying the performance criteria. It is shown that such a structure has an optimum seismic performance, in which the maximum structure capacity is used. Then the genetic algorithm which is an evolutionary optimization method is used for optimal arrangement of the steel dampers in the structure. In continuation for specifying the optimal accurate response, the local search algorithm based on the gradient concept has been selected. In this research the introduced optimization methods are used for optimal retrofitting in the moment-resisting frame with inelastic behavior and initial weakness in design. Ultimately the optimal configuration of dampers over the height of building specified and by comparing the results of the uniform deformation method with those of the genetic algorithm, the validity of the uniform deformation method in terms of accuracy, Time Speed Optimization and the simplicity of the theory have been proven.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.209-221
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• 2015

Results from an experimental study on the seismic response of six composite reinforced concrete column-to-steel beam interior joints are presented. The primary variable investigated is the details in the joint. For the basic specimen, the main subassemblies of the beam and column are both continuous, and the steel beam flanges extended to the joint are partly cut off. Transverse beam, steel band plates, cove plates, X shape reinforcement bars and end plates are used in the other five specimens, respectively. After the joint steel panel yielded, two failure modes were observed during the test: local failure in Specimens 1, 2 and 4, shear failure in Specimens 3, 5 and 6. Specimens 6, 3, 5 and 4 have a better strength and deformation capacity than the other two specimens for the effectiveness of their subassemblies. For Specimens 2 and 4, though the performance of strength degradation and stiffness degradation are not as good as the other four specimens, they all have excellent energy dissipation capacity comparing to the RC joint, or the Steel Reinforced Concrete (SRC) joint. Based on the test result, some suggestions are presented for the design of composite RCS joint.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.455-462
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• 2013

The effects of earthquakes can be devastating especially to existing structures that are not based on earthquake resistant design. This study proposes a steel grid shear wall that can provide a sufficient lateral resistance and can be used as a seismic retrofit method. The pushover analysis was performed on RC structure with and without the proposed steel grid shear wall. Obtain the performance point that the target structure for seismic loads applied to evaluate the response and performance levels. The capacity spectrum at performance point is nearly elastic range, so satisfied the performance objectives(LS level). And response modification factor(R factor) were calculated from the pushover analysis. The R factor approach is currently implemented to reflect inelastic ductile behavior of the structures and to reduce elastic spectral demands from earthquakes to the design level. The R factor increases from 2.17 to 3.25 was higher than the design criteria. As a result, according to reinforcement by steel grid shear wall, strength, stiffness, and ductility of the low-rise RC structure has been appropriately improved.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.3
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• pp.351-368
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• 2021

This paper, by applying a reliability-based framework, develops seismic vulnerability macrozonation maps for Tehran, the capital and one of the most earthquake-vulnerable city of Iran. Seismic performance assessment of 3-, 4- and 5-story steel moment resisting frames (SMRFs), designed according to ASCE/SEI 41-17 and Iranian Code of Practice for Seismic Resistant Design of Buildings (2800 Standard), is investigated in terms of overall maximum inter-story drift ratio (MIDR) and unit repair cost ratio which is hereafter known as "damage ratio". To this end, Tehran city is first meshed into a network of 66 points to numerically locate low- to mid-rise SMRFs. Active faults around Tehran are next modeled explicitly. Two different combination of faults, based on available seismological data, are then developed to explore the impact of choosing a proper seismic scenario. In addition, soil effect is exclusively addressed. After building analytical models, reliability methods in combination with structure-specific probabilistic models are applied to predict demand and damage ratio of structures in a cost-effective paradigm. Due to capability of proposed methodology incorporating both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties explicitly, this framework which is centered on the regional demand and damage ratio estimation via structure-specific characteristics can efficiently pave the way for decision makers to find the most vulnerable area in a regional scale. This technical basis can also be adapted to any other structures which the demand and/or damage ratio prediction models are developed.