• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.1069-1089
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• 2015

This paper investigates the limits and efficacies of the Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) material for strengthening mid-rise RC buildings against seismic actions. Turkey, the region of the highest seismic risk in Europe, is chosen as the case-study country, the building stock of which consists in its vast majority of mid-rise RC residential and/or commercial buildings. Strengthening with traditional methods is usually applied in most projects, as ordinary construction materials and no specialized workmanship are required. However, in cases of tight time constraints, architectural limitations, durability issues or higher demand for ductile performance, FRP material is often opted for since the most recent Turkish Earthquake Code allows engineers to employ this advanced-technology product to overcome issues of inadequate ductility or shear capacity of existing RC buildings. The paper compares strengthening of a characteristically typical mid-rise Turkish RC building by two methods, i.e., traditional column jacketing and FRP strengthening, evaluating their effectiveness with respect to the requirements of the Turkish Earthquake Code. The effect of FRP confinement is explicitly taken into account in the numerical model, unlike the common procedure followed according to which the demand on un-strengthened members is established and then mere section analyses are employed to meet the additional demands.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.263-270
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• 2017

In this study, two geometrically identical multi-storey steel buildings with different lateral load resisting systems are structurally analyzed under same earthquake conditions and they are compared with respect to their construction costs of their structural systems. One of the systems is a steel structure with eccentrically steel braced frames. The other one is a RC wall-steel frame system, that is a steel framed structure in combination with a reinforced concrete core and shear walls of minimum thickness that the national code allows. As earthquake resisting systems, steel braced frames and reinforced concrete shear walls, for both cases are located on identical places in either building. Floors of both buildings will be of reinforced concrete slabs of same thickness resting on composite beams. The façades are assumed to be covered identically with light-weight aluminum cladding with insulation. Purpose of use for both buildings is an office building of eight stories. When two systems are structurally analyzed by FEM (finite element method) and dimensionally compared, the dual one comes up with almost 34% less cost of construction with respect to their structural systems. This in turn means that, by using a dual system in earthquake zones such as Turkey, for multi-storey steel buildings with RC floors, more economical solutions can be achieved. In addition, slender steel columns and beams will add to that and consequently more space in rooms is achieved.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.939-963
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• 2016

According to the new directives about the rational and efficient use of energy, thermal bridges in buildings have to be avoided, and the thermal insulation (TI) layer should run without interruptions all around the building - even under its foundations. The paper deals with the seismic response of multi-storeyed reinforced concrete (RC) frame building structures founded on an extruded polystyrene (XPS) layer placed beneath the foundation slab. The purpose of the paper is to elucidate the problem of buildings founded on a TI layer from the seismic resistance point of view, to assess the seismic behaviour of such buildings, and to search for the critical parameters which can affect the structural and XPS layer response. Nonlinear dynamic and static analyses were performed, and the seismic response of fixed-base (FB) and thermally insulated (TI) variants of nonlinear RC building models were compared. Soil-structure interaction was also taken into account for different types of soil. The results showed that the use of a TI layer beneath the foundation slab of a superstructure generally induces a higher peak response compared to that of a corresponding system without TI beneath the foundation slab. In the case of stiff structures located on firm soil, amplification of the response might be substantial and could result in exceedance of the superstructure's moment-rotation plastic hinge capacities or allowable lateral roof and interstorey drift displacements. In the case of heavier, slenderer, and higher buildings subjected to stronger seismic excitations, the overall response is governed by the rocking mode of oscillation, and as a consequence the compressive strength of the XPS could be insufficient. On the other hand, in the case of low-rise and light-weight buildings, the friction capacity between the layers of the applied TI foundation set might be exceeded so that sliding could occur.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.83-96
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• 2002

Reconstruction and redevelopment of old and dilapidated apartment and housing have been increasing to provide more housing accommodation and to secure the safety of building structures since the middle of 1990's. Since, however, little researches on the demolition technique have been made, conventional mechanical demolition method were applied to the most of works that resulted in flooding in small demolition companies. Problems associated with mechanical demolition method are increase not only in working days and costs, but also in public claims, particularly for high-rise building structures. This is to contribute the demolition industries bt providing the concept, standards, and technique of demolition engineering while maximizing working efficiency and minimizing public claims.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.387-392
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• 2002

In many years, post-tensioning method has been used for structural reinforcement of RC structures due to easy installation and good quality control. This study presents practical application results for the effectiveness of structural post-tensioning reinforcement of the FCM bridge girders, cement silos and building girders. For the FCM bridges deflected excessively at the end of girders, for cement silos cracked vertically at silo surface and for building girders deflected due to heavy load from roof, the external post-tensioning method was used for uplifting deflected girders and closing cracks with increasing resisting capacity of the structures. It was demonstrated that all the items were rehabilitated nearly to the initial construction status according to the field test results.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.185-201
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• 2022

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is used to provide reliable information about the structure's integrity in near realtime following extreme incidents such as earthquakes, considering the inevitable aging and degradation that occurs in operating environments. This paper experimentally investigates an integrated wireless sensor network (Wi-SN) based monitoring technique for damage detection in concrete structures. An effective SHM technique can be used to detect potential structural damage based on post-earthquake data. Two novel methods are proposed for damage detection in reinforced concrete (RC) building structures including: (i) Jerk Energy Method (JEM), which is based on time-domain analysis, and (ii) Modal Contributing Parameter (MCP), which is based on frequency-domain analysis. Wireless accelerometer sensors are installed at each story level to monitor the dynamic responses from the building structure. Prior knowledge of the initial state (immediately after construction) of the structure is not required in these methods. Proposed methods only use responses recorded during ambient vibration state (i.e., operational state) to estimate the damage index. Herein, the experimental studies serve as an illustration of the procedures. In particular, (i) a 3-story shear-type steel frame model is analyzed for several damage scenarios and (ii) 2-story RC scaled down (at 1/6th) building models, simulated and verified under experimental tests on a shaking table. As a result, in addition to the usual benefits like system adaptability, and cost-effectiveness, the proposed sensing system does not require a cluster of sensors. The spatial information in the real-time recorded data is used in global damage identification stage of SHM. Whereas in next stage of SHM, the damage is detected at the story level. Experimental results also show the efficiency and superior performance of the proposed measuring techniques.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1349-1362
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• 2015

This paper presents an analytical study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of using buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) in mitigating the seismic response of a case study 6 storey reinforced concrete (RC) building. In the design of the BRBs with non-prismatic cross-sections, twelve combinations of ${\alpha}$ and ${\beta}$ design parameters that influence the strength and stiffness of the BRBs, respectively, were considered. The response of the structure with and without BRBs under earthquake ground accelerations were evaluated through nonlinear dynamic analysis. Two sets of ground motions representative of the design earthquake with 10% and 50% exceedance probability in fifty years were taken into account. By comparing the structural performance of the original and buckling restrained braced structures, it was observed that the use of the BRBs were very effective in mitigating the seismic response as a retrofit scheme. However, the selection of the strength and stiffness parameters of the BRBs had considerable effect on the response characteristics of RC structures. For instance, by increasing the value of ${\alpha}$ and by decreasing the value of ${\beta}$ of the buckling-restrained braces, the maximum deformation demand of the structures increased.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.95-105
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• 2017

The use of superelastic shape memory alloys (SMAs) as reinforcements in concrete structures is gradually gaining interest among researchers. Because of different mechanical properties of SMAs compared to the regular steel bars, the use of SMAs as reinforcement in the concrete may change the response of structures under seismic loads. In this study, the effect of SMAs as reinforcement in concrete structures is analytically investigated for 3-, 6- and 8-story reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. For each concrete building, three different reinforcement details are considered: (1) steel reinforcement (Steel) only, (2) SMA bar used in the plastic hinge region of the beams and steel bar in other regions (Steel-SMA), and (3), beams fully reinforced with SMA bar (SMA) and steel bar in other regions. For each case, columns are reinforced with steel bar. Incremental Dynamic Analyses (IDA) are performed using ten different ground motion records to determine the seismic performance of Steel, Steel-SMA and SMA RC buildings. Then fragility curves for each type of RC building by using IDA results for IO, LS and CP performance levels are calculated. Results obtained from the analyses indicate that 3-story frames have approximately the same spectral acceleration corresponding with failure of frames, but in the cases of 6 and 8-story frames, the spectral acceleration is higher in frames equipped with steel reinforcements. Furthermore, the probability of fragility in all frames increases by the building height for all performance levels. Finally, economic evaluation of the three systems are compared.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2009

Two types of piloti-type high-rise RC building structures having irregularity in the lower two stories were selected as prototypes, and nonlinear time history analysis was performed using OpenSees to verify the analysis technique and to investigate the seismic capacity of those buildings. One of the buildings studied had a symmetrical moment-resisting frame (BF), while the other had an infilled shear wall in only one of the exterior frames (ESW). A fiber model, consisting of concrete and reinforcing bar represented from the stress-strain relationship, was adapted and used to simulate the nonlinearity of members, and MVLEM (Multi Vertical Linear Element Model) was used to simulate the behavior of the wall. The analytical results simulate the behavior of piloti-type high-rise RC building structures well, including the stiffness and yield force of piloti stories, the rocking behavior of the upper structure and the variation of the axial stiffness of the column due to variation in loading condition. However, MVLEM has a limitation in simulating the abrupt increasing lateral stiffness of a wall, due to the torsional mode behavior of the building. The design force obtained from a nonlinear time history analysis was shown to be about $20{\sim}30%$ smaller than that obtained in the experiment. For this reason, further research is required to match the analytical results with real structures, in order to use nonlinear time history analysis in designing a piloti-type high-rise RC building.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.31-39
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• 2021

The modular construction method is an off-site construction method using built-in structures from the manufacturing facilities. Modular construction is commonly applied to buildings which have relatively smaller and simpler structures than other types of buildings. Although modular building has emerged in the domestic construction industry as an alternative building strategy, previous researches on the environmental characteristics of modular building has not been comprehensively studied. Thus, this study empirically analyzed the insulation performance of thermal bridge and condensation parts of the modular buildings by using IR image analysis, Air-Surface Temperature Ratio method, and temperature difference ratio. The insulation performance analysis was conducted by comparing a modular building and a RC building in Seoul. The results shows that there was no significant difference between insulation performances of RC building and modular building. Furthermore