• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.511-539
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• 2015

The main objective of this study is to analytically investigate the effectiveness of different strengthening solutions in upgrading the seismic performance of existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Nepal. For this, four building models with different structural configurations and detailing were considered. Three possible rehabilitation solutions were studied, namely: (a) RC shear wall, (b) steel bracing, and (c) RC jacketing for all of the studied buildings. A numerical analysis was conducted with adaptive pushover and dynamic time history analysis. Seismic performance enhancement of the studied buildings was evaluated in terms of demand capacity ratio of the RC elements, capacity curve, inter-storey drift, energy dissipation capacity and moment curvature demand of the structures. Finally, the seismic safety assessment was performed based on standard drift limits, showing that retrofitting solutions significantly improved the seismic performance of existing buildings in Nepal.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.439-451
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• 2015

This study analyzed the isolation effect for a 15-story reinforced concrete (RC) building with regard to changes in the beam-column stiffness ratio and the difference in the vibration period between the superstructure and an isolation layer in order to provide basic data that are needed to devise a framework for the design of isolated RC buildings. First, this analytical study proposes to design RC building frames by securing an isolation period that is at least 2.5 times longer than the natural vibration period of a superstructure and configuring a target isolation period that is 3.0 s or longer. To verify the proposed plan, shaking table tests were conducted on a scaled-down model of 15-story RC building installed with laminated rubber bearings. The experimental results indicate that the tested isolated structure, which complied with the proposed conditions, exhibited an almost constant response distribution, verifying that the behavior of the structure improved in terms of usability. The RC building's response to inter-story drift (which causes structural damage) was reduced by about one-third that of a non-isolated structure, thereby confirming that the safety of such a superstructure can be achieved through the building's improved seismic performance.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.391-400
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• 2016

For earthquake loss estimation of building structures in Gangnam-Gu district in Seoul, three scenario earthquakes were selected by comparison of the response spectra of these scenario earthquakes with the design spectrum in Korean Building Code (KBC 2009), and then direct losses of the building structures in the Gangnam-Gu district under each scenario earthquake are estimated. The following conclusions are drawn from the results of damage and loss in the second scenario earthquake, which has a magnitude = 6.5 and epicentral distance =15 km: (1) The ratio of building stocks undergoing the extensive and complete damage level is 40.0% of the total. (2) The amount of direct economic losses appears approximately 19 trillion won, which is 1.2% of the national GDP of Korea. (3) About 25% of high-rise (over 10-story) RC building wall structures, were inflicted with the damage exceeding moderate level, when compared to 60% of low-rise building structures. (4) From the economical view point, the main loss, approximately 50%, was caused by the damage in the high-rise RC wall building structures.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.569-575
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• 2011

In domestic mechanical demolition work against RC building, unsuitable selection and loading of heavy equipment have led to occasional accidents such as collapse of structural members during the work. Therefore, proper analysis technique to easily decide allowable equipment load on the structure is needed at the planning stage of mechanical demolition work. In this paper, performing loading test and elastic analysis against 4-story building at full scale, we confirm appropriateness for allowable load of equipment on RC structures, which was suggested in previous study, and suggest structural analysis method that can evaluate safety of RC building during the mechanical demolition. The suggested method can be effectively utilized to improve work efficiency through safety of mechanical demolition work against RC building and proper management of equipments.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.459-473
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• 2016

Various vague and unstructured problems encountered the civil engineering/designers that persuaded by their experiences. One of these problems is the structural failure of the reinforced concrete (RC) building determination. Typically, using the traditional Limit state method is time consuming and complex in designing structures that are optimized in terms of one/many parameters. Recent research has revealed the Artificial Neural Networks potentiality in solving various real life problems. Thus, the current work employed the Multilayer Perceptron Feed-Forward Network (MLP-FFN) classifier to tackle the problem of predicting structural failure of multistoried reinforced concrete buildings via detecting the failure possibility of the multistoried RC building structure in the future. In order to evaluate the proposed method performance, a database of 257 multistoried buildings RC structures has been constructed by professional engineers, from which 150 RC structures were used. From the structural design, fifteen features have been extracted, where nine features of them have been selected to perform the classification process. Various performance measures have been calculated to evaluate the proposed model. The experimental results established satisfactory performance of the proposed model.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2023.11a
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• pp.179-180
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• 2023

The adhesion performance of PCCs for crack repair of RC structures was greater in the case of using ultra high-early strength cement than in the case of using ordinary Portland cement, and the effect of mixing silica fume was higher in the case of ordinary Portland cement than that of ultra high-early strength cement. On the other hand, 130% of W/C was more fluid than 80% of W/C in the same P/C 80%, which increased the fillability and improved the strength, but the strength improvement effect was the greatest in adhesion in flexure. Through this study, the basic characteristics of the adhesion performance of PCCs were identified, and based on this, it is necessary to induce an optimal mixing design that can increase adhesion performance through various mixing designs.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.77 no.4
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• pp.441-461
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• 2021

Reinforced concrete (RC) columns are crucial in building structures and they are of higher vulnerability to terrorist threat than any other structural elements. Thus it is of great interest and necessity to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the possible responses of RC columns when exposed to high intensive blast loads. The primary objective of this study is to derive analytical formulas to assess vulnerability of RC columns using an advanced numerical modelling approach. This investigation is necessary as the effect of blast loads would be minimal to the RC structure if the explosive charge is located at the safe standoff distance from the main columns in the building and therefore minimizes the chance of disastrous collapse of the RC columns. In the current research, finite element model is developed for RC columns using LS-DYNA program that includes a comprehensive discussion of the material models, element formulation, boundary condition and loading methods. Numerical model is validated to aid in the study of RC column testing against the explosion field test results. Residual capacity of RC column is selected as damage criteria. Intensive investigations using Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) methodology are then implemented to evaluate the influence of scaled distance, column dimension, concrete and steel reinforcement properties and axial load index on the vulnerability of RC columns. The generated empirical formulae can be used by the designers to predict a damage degree of new column design when consider explosive loads. With an extensive knowledge on the vulnerability assessment of RC structures under blast explosion, advancement to the convention design of structural elements can be achieved to improve the column survivability, while reducing the lethality of explosive attack and in turn providing a safer environment for the public.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.157-179
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• 2013

Vulnerability studies on the existing building stock require that a large number of buildings is analyzed to obtain statistically significant evaluations of the seismic performance. Therefore, analytical evaluation methods need to be based on simplified methodologies of analysis which can afford the treatment of a large building population with a reasonable computational effort. Simplified Pushover-Based Earthquake Loss Assessment approach (SP-BELA), where a simplified methodology to identify the structural capacity of the building through the definition of a pushover curve is adopted, was developed on these bases. Main objective of the research work presented in this paper is to validate the simplified methodology implemented in SP-BELA against the results of more sophisticated nonlinear dynamic analyses (NLDAs). The comparison is performed for RC buildings designed only to vertical loads, representative of the "as built" in Italy and in Mediterranean countries with a building stock very similar to the Italian one. In NLDAs the non linear and degrading behaviour, typical of the structures under consideration when subjected to high seismic loads, is evaluated using models able to capture, with adequate accuracy, the non linear behaviour of RC structural elements taking into account stiffness degradation, strength deterioration, and pinching effect. Results show when simplified analyses are in good agreement with NLDAs. As a consequence, unsatisfactory results from simplified analysis are pointed out to address their current applicability limits.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.1315-1330
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• 2016

This study investigates ground motion parameters and their damage potential for building type structures. It focuses on low and mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings that are important portion of the existing building stock under seismic risk in many countries. Correlations of 19 parameters of 466 earthquake records with nonlinear displacement demands of 1056 Single Degree of Freedom (SDOF) systems are investigated. Properties of SDOF systems are established to represent RC building construction practice. The correlation of damage and ground motion characteristics is examined with respect to number of story and site classes. Equations for average nonlinear displacement demands of considered RC buildings are given for some of the ground motion parameters. Velocity related parameters are generally found to have better results than the acceleration, displacement and frequency related ones. Correlation of the parameters may be expected to decrease with increasing intensity of seismic event. Velocity Spectrum Intensity and Peak Ground Velocity have been found to have the highest correlation values for almost all site classes and number of story groups. Common parameter of Peak Ground Acceleration has lower correlation with damage when compared to them and some other parameters like Effective Design Acceleration and Characteristic Intensity.

• 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.