• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.1 no.4
• /
• pp.371-390
• /
• 2010

Historical buildings in seismically active regions are severely damaged by earthquakes, since they certainly were not designed by the original builders to withstand seismic effects. In particular the reports after major ground motions indicate that earthquake-induced pounding between buildings may lead to substantial damage or even collapse of colliding structures. The research on structural pounding during earthquakes has been recently much advanced, although most of the studies are conducted on simplified single degree of freedom systems. In this paper a detailed pounding-involved response analysis of three adjacent structures is performed, concerning the main bodies of the "Quinto Orazio Flacco" school. The construction includes a main masonry building, with an M-shaped plan, and a reinforced concrete building, separated from the masonry one and realized along its free perimeter. By the analysis of the capacity curves obtained by suitable pushover procedures performed separately for each building, it emerges that masonry and reinforced concrete buildings are vulnerable to earthquake-induced structural pounding in the longitudinal direction. In particular, due to the geometric configuration of the school, a special case of impact between the reinforced concrete structure and two parts of the masonry building occurs. In order to evaluate the pounding-involved response of three adjacent structures, in this paper a numerical procedure is proposed, programmed using MATLAB software. Both a non-linear viscoelastic model to simulate impact and an elastic-perfectly plastic approximation of the storey shear force-drift relation are assumed, differently from many commercial softwares which admit just one non-linearity.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.35-45
• /
• 2017

The current paper investigates the effect of the seismic pounding of neighboring buildings on the response of structures isolated by Triple Friction Pendulum Bearing (TFPB). To this end, a symmetric three-dimensional single story building is modeled for analysis with two specified levels of top deck and base deck, to capture the seismic response of the base isolators and building's roof. Linear elastic springs with different level of gaps are employed to calculate the impact between the buildings. Nonlinear Dynamic Time History Analyses (NDTHA) are conducted for seismic evaluation. Also, five different sizes with four different sets of friction coefficients are assumed for base isolators to cover a whole range of base isolation systems with various geometry configurations and fundamental period. The results are investigated in terms of base shear, buildings' drift and top deck acceleration of the superstructure. The results also indicate the profound effect of the stiffness of the adjacent buildings on the value of the impact they impose to the superstructure. Also, in situations of potential pounding, the increment of the fundamental period of the TFPB base isolator could intensify the impact force up to nearly five-fold.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.11 no.6
• /
• pp.1123-1141
• /
• 2016

To explore the application of traditional tuned mass dampers (TMDs) to the earthquake induced vibration control problem, a pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) is proposed by adding a viscoelastic limitation to the traditional TMD. In the proposed PTMD, the vibration energy can be further dissipated through the impact between the attached mass and the viscoelastic layer. More energy dissipation modes can guarantee better control effectiveness under a suite of excitations. To further reduce mass ratio and enhance the implementation of the PTMD control, multiple PTMDs (MPTMD) control is then presented. After the experimental validation of the proposed improved Hertz based pounding model, the basic equations of the MPTMD controlled system are obtained. Numerical simulation is conducted on the benchmark model of the Canton Tower. The control effectiveness of the PTMD and the MPTMD is analyzed and compared under different earthquake inputs. The sensitivity and the optimization of the design parameters are also investigated. It is demonstrated that PTMDs have better control efficiency over the traditional TMDs, especially under more severe excitation. The control performance can be further improved with MPTMD control. The robustness can be enhanced while the attached mass for each PTMD can be greatly reduced. It is also demonstrated through the simulation that a non-uniformly distributed MPTMD has better control performance than the uniformly distributed one. Parameter study is carried out for both the PTMD and the MPTMD systems. Finally, the optimization of the design parameters, including mass ratio, initial gap value, and number of PTMD in the MPTMD system, is performed for control improvement.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2001.04a
• /
• pp.353-360
• /
• 2001

An analysis procedure of 2-dimensional bridge dynamics has been developed by using force-deformation model, which simulates the pier motion under biaxial bending due to the bi-directional input seismic excitations. A three-dimensional mechanical model is utilized, which can consider the other major phenomena such as pounding, rotation of the superstructure, abutment stiffness degradation, and motions of the foundation motions. The bi-directional dynamic behaviors of the bridge are then examined by investigating the relative displacements of each oscillator to the ground. It is found that the nonlinearity of the pier due to biaxial bending affects the pier motions, but the global bridge behaviors are greatly governed by the pounding phenomena and stiffness degradation of the abutment-backfill system. Especially, the relative displacement of the abutment system (A2) with movable supports to the ground is increased about 30% due to the abutment stiffness degradation.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.9-16
• /
• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of both various shoe types and bare feet on ground reaction force while walking. Ten first-year female university students were selected. A force platform(Kistler, Germany) was used to measure ground reaction force. Six types of shoe were tested: flip flops, canvas shoes, running shoes, elevated forefoot walking shoes, elevated midfoot walking shoes, and five-toed shoes. The control group was barefooted. Only vertical passive/active ground reaction force variables were analyzed. The statistical analysis was carried out using the SAS 9.1.2 package, specifically ANOVA, and Tukey for the post hoc. The five-toed shoe had the highest maximum passive force value; while the running shoe had the lowest. The first active loading rate for running shoes was the highest; meanwhile, bare feet, the five-toed shoe, and the elevated fore foot walking shoe was the lowest. Although barefoot movement or movement in five toed shoes increases impact, it also allows for full movement of the foot. This in turn allows the foot arch to work properly, fully flexing along three arches(transverse, lateral, medial), facilitating braking force and initiating forward movement as the tendons, ligaments, and muscles of the arch flex back into shape. In contrast movement in padded shoes have a tendency to pound their feet into the ground. This pounding action can result in greater foot instability, which would account for the higher loading rates for the first active peak for padded shoes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.58 no.6
• /
• pp.1127-1143
• /
• 2016

The pounding phenomenon in adjacent structures happens in severing earthquakes that can cause great damages. Connecting neighboring structures with active and semi-active control devices is an effective method to avoid mutual colliding between neighboring buildings. One of the most important issues in control systems is applying online control force. There will be a time delay if the prose of producing control force does not perform on time. This paper proposed a time-delay compensation method in coupled structures control, with semi-active Magnetorheological (MR) damper. This method based on Newmark's integration is adopted to mitigate the time-delay effect. In this study, Lyapunov's direct approach is employed to compute demanded voltage for MR dampers. Using Lyapunov's direct algorithm guarantees the system stability to design a controller based on feedback. Because of the strong nonlinearity of MR dampers, the equation of motion of coupled structures becomes an involved equation, and it is impossible to solve it with the common time step methods. In present paper modified Newmark-Beta integration based on the instantaneous optimal control algorithm, used to solve the involved equation. In this method, the response of a coupled system estimated base on optimal control force. Two MDOF structures with different degrees of freedom are finally considered as a numeric example. The numerical results show, the Newmark compensation is an efficient method to decrease the negative effect of time delay in coupled systems; furthermore, instantaneous optimal control algorithm can estimate the response of structures suitable.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 1999.10a
• /
• pp.291-300
• /
• 1999

An idealized analytical model is proposed to estimate the effects of restrainer upon global response behaviors of a bridge system under seismic excitations. Pounding actions between adjacent vibration units and friction at movable supports are introduced in addition to other phenomena such as nonlinear behaviors of pier, motions of the foundation and abutment to achieve the better prediction of the bridge motion. The applied restrainer is assumed to be a dead-band system, which has the force clearance and the linear-elastic force. Using the proposed model, the dynamic characteristics of a bridge system retrofitted by restrainers is examined, and the effects of stiffness and clearance length of restrainer is also investigated. The main effect of the application of restrainers is found to reduce the relative displacements and the trend becomes greater with the shorter clearance length except between pier units. It is found that the relative displacements between abutment and adjacent pier units are decreased as the stiffness of restrainer increases, but almost independent upon the stiffness increments of restrainer. However, the relative displacements between pier units tend to be increased due to the applications of the restrainers.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.765-779
• /
• 2020

Collapse of bridges in recent earthquakes demonstrates the need to deepen the understanding of the behaviour of these structures against seismic actions. This paper presents a highly detailed numerical model of an actual bridge subjected to extreme seismic action which results in its collapse. Normally, nonlinear numerical models have high difficulties to achieve convergence when reinforced concrete is intended to be represented. The main objective of this work is to determine the efficiency of different passive control strategies to prevent the structural collapse of an existing bridge. Metallic dampers and seismic isolation by decoupling the mass were evaluated. The response is evaluated not only in terms of reduction of displacements, but also in increasing of shear force and axial force in key elements, which can be a negative characteristic of the systems studied. It can be concluded that the use of a metallic damper significantly reduces the horizontal displacements and ensures the integrity of the structure from extreme seismic actions. Moreover, the isolation of the deck, which in principle seems to be the most effective solution to protect existing bridges, proves inadequate for the case analysed due to its dynamic characteristics and its particular geometry and an unpredictable type of axial pounding in the columns. This unexpected effect on the isolation system would have been impossible to identify with simplified models.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.151-164
• /
• 2017

This article aims to investigate the possible retrofitting of a deficient building with soft story failure mode by connecting it to an adjacent building which is designed based on current code with friction dampers at all floors. Low cost and high performance reliability along with significant energy dissipation pertaining to stable hysteretic loops may be considered in order to choose the proper damper for connecting adjacent buildings. After connecting two neighbouring floors by friction dampers, the sliding forces of dampers at various stories are set in two arrangements: uniform sliding force and then variable sliding force. In order to account for the stochastic nature of the seismic events, incremental dynamic analyses are employed prior and after the installation of the friction dampers at the various floors. Based on these results, fragility curves and mean annual rate of exceedance of serviceability and ultimate limit states are obtained. The results of this study show that the collapse mode of the deficient building can affect the optimum arrangement of sliding forces of friction dampers at Collapse Prevention (CP) performance level. In particular, the Immediate Occupancy (IO) performance level is not tangible to the sliding force arrangement and it depends solely on sliding force value. Generally it can be claimed that this rehabilitation scheme can turn the challenge of pounding two adjacent buildings into the opportunity of dissipating a large amount of the seismic input energy by the friction dampers, thus improving significantly the poor seismic performance of the deficient structure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.39-53
• /
• 2021

By means of installing sloped rolling-type seismic isolators (SRI), the horizontal acceleration transmitted to the to-be-protected object above can be effectively and significantly reduced under external disturbance. To prevent the maximum horizontal displacement response of SRI from reaching a threshold, designing large and conservative damping force for SRI might be required, which will also enlarge the transmitted acceleration response. In a word, when adopting seismic isolation, minimizing acceleration or displacement responses is always a trade-off. Therefore, this paper proposes that by exploiting the possible information provided by an earthquake early warning system, the damping force applied to SRI which can better control both acceleration and displacement responses might be determined in advance and accordingly adjusted in a semi-active control manner. By using a large number of ground motion records with peak ground acceleration not less than 80 gal, the numerical results present that the maximum horizontal displacement response of SRI is highly correlated with and proportional to some important parameters of input excitations, the velocity pulse energy rate and peak velocity in particular. A control law employing the basic form of hyperbolic tangent function and two objective functions are considered in this study for conceptually developing suitable control algorithms. Compared with the numerical results of simply designing a constant, large damping factor to prevent SRI from pounding, adopting the recommended control algorithms can have more than 60% reduction of acceleration responses in average under the excitations. More importantly, it is effective in reducing acceleration responses under approximately 98% of the excitations.