• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.735-752
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• 2015

The effectiveness of seismic retrofitting of RC-frame buildings by converting selected bays into new walls through infilling with RC walls was studied experimentally using a full-scale four-storey model tested with the pseudo-dynamic (PsD) method. The frames were designed and detailed for gravity loads only using different connection details between the walls and the bounding frame. In order to simulate the experimental response, two numerical models were formulated differing at the level of modelling. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the capabilities of these models to simulate the experimental nonlinear behaviour of the tested RC building strengthened with RC infill walls and comment on their effectiveness. The comparison between the capacity, in terms of peak ground acceleration, of the strengthened frame and the one of the bare frame, which was obtained numerically, has shown a five-fold increase.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2019.05a
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• pp.258-259
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• 2019

Corrosion of rebar in RC structures, which results in premature deterioration of reinforced concrete structures, is a very serious problem. Most corrosion monitoring and sensing technologies require some type of wired or wireless connection between the sensor and monitoring electronics. This causes significant problems in their installation and long-term use. In this paper we describe a corrosion monitoring technology of rebar in reinforced concrete structures. Especially, it is emphasize that the development of sensors and monitoring system not only occurrence of rebar corrosion but also penetration of deterioration factor such like chloride ion and carbon dioxite etc..

• Magazine of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.25-36
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• 2008

Seismic design of reinforced concrete flat plate structures is often complicated as it deals with three dimensionality and continuous spans, and mostly material complexity and reinforcement variation. A great degree of uncertainty in such structural and material properties is thus inherent in the RC flat plate systems, and hinders simplification of the design process in terms of slab flexure, unbalanced moment transfer at a slab-column connection, and punching shear. For these reasons, there have been substantial changes and updates in building codes relating to flat plates and slab-column connections over a handful of decades. Also, for the same reason, some of codes never have been revised. As a consequence of nonsimultaneous development of each provision, it tends to confuse structural engineers when using a mixture of all different US code provisions. In this paper, in the step-by-step logical order, seismic design of the RC flat plate systems is re-organized and clarified to make it easier to apply. Furthermore, recent changes or proposed changes are introduced, and are explained as to how it will apply in practice.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.703-731
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• 2013

In order to verify the applicability of buckling restrained braces (BRB's) and fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets to the seismic strengthening of a low-rise RC building having the irregularities of a soft/weak story and torsion at the ground story, a series of earthquake simulation tests were conducted on a 1:5 scale RC building model before, and after, the strengthening, and these test results are compared and analyzed, to check the effectiveness of the strengthening. Based on the investigations, the following conclusions are made: (1) The BRB's revealed significant slips at the joint with the existing RC beam, up-lifts of columns from RC foundations and displacements due to the flexibility of foundations, and final failure due to the buckling and fracture of base joint angles. The lateral stiffness appeared to be, thereby, as low as one seventh of the intended value, which led to a large yield displacement and, therefore, the BRB's could not dissipate seismic input energy as desired within the range of anticipated displacements. (2) Although the strengthened model did not behave as desired, great enhancement in earthquake resistance was achieved through an approximate 50% increase in the lateral resistance of the wall, due to the axial constraint by the peripheral BRB frames. Finally, (3) whereas in the original model, base torsion was resisted by both the inner core walls and the peripheral frames, the strengthened model resisted most of the base torsion with the peripheral frames, after yielding of the inner core walls, and represented dual values of torsion stiffness, depending on the yielding of core walls.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.625-639
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• 2019

The concept of the combined seismic and energy retrofitting of existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings was examined in this paper through a number of case studies conducted on model buildings (simulating buildings of the '60s-'80s in southern Europe) constructed according to outdated design standards. Specifically, seismic and thermal analyses have been conducted prior to and after the application of selected retrofitting schemes, in order to quantify the positive effect that retrofitting could provide to RC buildings both in terms of their structural and energy performance. Advanced materials, namely the textile reinforced mortars (TRM), were used for providing seismic retrofitting by means of jacketing of masonry infills in RC frames. Moreover, following the application of the TRM jackets, thermal insulation materials were simultaneously provided to the RC building envelope, exploiting the fresh mortar used to bind the TRM jackets. In addition to the externally applied insulation material, all the fenestration elements (windows and doors) were replaced with new high energy efficiency ones. Afterwards, an economic measure, namely the expected annual loss (EAL) was used to evaluate the efficiency of each retrofitting method, but also to assess whether the combined seismic and energy retrofitting is economically feasible. From the results of this preliminary study, it was concluded that the selected seismic retrofitting technique can indeed enhance significantly the structural behaviour of an existing RC building and lower its EAL related to earthquake risks. Finally, it was found that the combined seismic and energy upgrading is economically more efficient than a sole energy or seismic retrofitting scenario for seismic areas of south Europe.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.107-114
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• 2014

Passive energy dissipation systems for seismic applications have been under development for a number of years with a rapid increase in implementations starting in the mid-1990s in many countries. A metallic hysteretic damper has most commonly been used for seismic protection of structures in domestic area because they present high energy-dissipation potential at relatively low cost and easy to install and maintain. This paper presents an analytical case study of the effectiveness of isotropic hysteretic metallic damper(IHMD) called Kagome as a passive dissipative device in reducing structural response during seismic excitation. An eighteen-story RC framed apartment building is studied with and without IHMD. Results demonstrate the feasibility of these techniques for seismic mitigation. The inclusion of supplemental passive energy dissipation devices in the form of IHMD proved to be a very effective method for significantly reducing the seismic response of the building investigated.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.575-588
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• 2019

Seismic design method based on bearing capacity has been widely adopted in building codes around the world, however, damage and collapse state of structure under strong earthquake can not be reflected accurately. This paper aims to present a deformation-based seismic design method based on the research of RC component deformation index limit, which combines with the feature of Chinese building codes. In the proposed method, building performance is divided into five levels and components are classified into three types according to their importance. Five specific design approaches, namely, "Elastic Design", "Unyielding Design", "Limit Design", "Minimum Section Design" and "Deformation Assessment", are defined and used in different scenarios to prove whether the seismic performance objectives are attained. For the components which exhibit ductile failure, deformation of components under strong earthquake are obtained quantitatively in order to identify the damage state of the components. For the components which present brittle shear failure, their performance is guaranteed by bearing capacity. As a case study, seismic design of an extremely irregular twin-tower high rise building was carried out according to the proposed method. The results evidenced that the damage and anti-collapse ability of structure were estimated and controlled by both deformation and bearing capacity.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.3
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• pp.349-365
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• 2022

Steel fibre-reinforced concrete (SFRC) is an emerging class of composite for construction. However, a reliable method to assess the flexural behaviour of SFRC structural member is in lack. An analytical technique is proposed for determining the moment-curvature response of concrete beams reinforced with steel fibres and longitudinal bars (R/SFRC members). The behaviour of the tensile zone of such members is highly complex due to the interaction between the residual (tension softening) stresses of SFRC and the tension stiffening stresses. The current study suggests a transparent and mechanically sound method to combine these two stress concepts. Tension stiffening is modelled by the reinforcement-related approach assuming that the corresponding stresses act in the area of tensile reinforcement. The effect is quantified based on the analogy between the R/SFRC member and the equivalent RC member having identical geometry and materials except fibres. It is assumed that the resultant tension stiffening force for the R/SFRC member can be calculated as for the equivalent RC member providing that the reinforcement strain in the cracked section of these members is the same. The resultant tension stiffening force can be defined from the moment-curvature relation of the equivalent RC member using an inverse technique. The residual stress is calculated using an existing model that eliminates the need for dedicated mechanical testing. The proposed analytical technique was validated against test data of R/SFRC beams and slabs.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.195-204
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• 2011

During mechanical demolition of RC structures, weights of dismantling equipment and demolition waste of building are applied to unexpected load which did not be considered during the design of structural member. Nevertheless, the loading of dismantling equipment and dismantling process are mainly dependent on field managers' field workers' or experiences without considering safety of structural member by a structural engineer. It is urgently required that reflecting actual circumstance of mechanical demolition, safety evaluation method to evaluate the safety and the guideline for appropriate capacity of structural member to support dismantling equipment weight, be provided. Through site investigation and questionnaire on field workers, this paper proposed demolition waste load, load factor, strength reduction factor, and so on. These are essential to safe evaluation of a building, ready to demolition. Considering actual circumstance of mechanical demolition, safety evaluation method of building and design method of slab and beam was suggested to a dilapidated building. An capability to loading of dismantling equipment was proposed, applied to RC slab and RC beam. Therefore, the suggested safety evaluation method and the guideline for an capability to loading of dismantling equipment weight can reasonably evaluate the capacity of structural member in demolition and use effectively as increasing efficiency and improving safety of demolition through proper management of dismantling equipments.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.391-405
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• 2020

The use of passive energy dissipation devices has been widely used in the construction industry to minimize the probability of damage occurred under intense ground motion. In this study, collapse margin ratio (CMR) and fragility curves are the main parameters in the assessment to characterize the collapse safety of the structures. The assessment is done on three types of RC frame structures, incorporating three types of dampers, viscoelastic, friction, and BRB dampers. The Incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) were performed by simulating an array of 20 strong ground motion (SGM) records considering both far-field and near-field seismic scenarios that were followed by fragility curves. With respect to far-field ground motion records, the CMR values of the selected frames indicate to be higher and reachable to safety margin more than those under near-field ground motion records that introduce a high devastating impact on the structures compared to far-field excitations. This implies that the near field impact affects the ground movements at the site by attenuation the direction and causing high-frequency filtration. Besides that, the results show that the viscoelastic damper gives better performance for the structures in terms of reducing the damages compared to the other energy dissipation devices during earthquakes.