• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.49-63
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• 2017

Traditional reinforced concrete slabs and beams are widely used for building. The use of flat slab structures gives advantages over traditional reinforced concrete building in terms of design flexibility, easier formwork and use of space and shorter building time. Deflection of the slab plays a critical role on the design and service life of building components; however, there is no recent research to explore actual deformation of concrete slab despite various advancements within the design codes and construction technology. This experimental study adopts the Hydrostatic Levelling Cells method for monitoring the deformation of a multi-storey building with flat slabs. In addition, this research presents and discusses the experimental results for the vertical deformation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.21-28
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• 2012

This study proposes a procedure for evaluating the seismic performance and retrofit of a typical reinforced building (R/C) school buildings contructed in the 1980s. The procedure is derived from the Japanese Standard for Evaluation of Seismic Capacity of Existing Reinforced Concrete Buildings and Nonlinear Static Procedure (NSP) specified in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA 356). In this study, the Japanese Standard was applied for evaluating the additionally required seismic performance in the existing school building. Cast-in-place (CIP) reinforced concrete infill walls and steel braces were used to seismically retrofit the existing school building located in the region of Hongsung in Chungnam. In the pushover analysis, i.e NSP, the hinge properties of columns, beams, infill walls and steel braces were carefully calibrated based on the existing experiment results in the available literatures. The predicted seismic performance for the retrofitted building was compared to that for the virgin building. Based on the seismic evaluation with the Japanese Standard and the FEMA 356 criteria, the addition of CIP reinforced concrete infill walls and steel braces have superior constructablility and can improve effectively the seismic performance of the existing school buildings constructed in 1980s.

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

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.183-193
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• 2012

Compressive property of high strength concrete with amorphous metal fibers subject to high temperature has been investigated. The measure of this investigation includes explosive spalling, weight loss, residual compressive strength, strain at peak stress, elastic modulus, and residual energy absorption capacity after exposure to $400^{\circ}C$, $600^{\circ}C$and $800^{\circ}C$. In addition to the amorphous metal fiber, two other types of fibers (polypropylene fiber and hooked-end steel fiber) were also included in this investigation for comparison. The experimental program was conducted with high strength concrete using several combinations of the fiber types. The testing result shows that the concrete with amorphous metal fibers plus polypropylene fibers shows a superior behavior than those using other combination or single fiber type ingredient.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1669-1680
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• 2019

Seismic safety is considered to be one of the key design objectives of AP1000 nuclear power plant (NPP) in strong earthquakes. Dynamic behavior, damage development and aggravation effect are studied in this study for the three main components of AP1000 NPP, namely reinforced concrete shield building (RCSB), steel vessel containment (SVC) and reinforced concrete auxiliary building (RCAB). Characteristics including nonlinear concrete tension and compressive constitutions with plastic damage are employed to establish the numerical model, which is further validated by existing studies. The author investigates three earthquakes and eight input levels with the maximum magnitude of 2.4 g and the results show that the concrete material of both RCSB and RCAB have suffered serious damage in intense earthquakes. Considering RCAB in the whole NPP, significant damage aggravation effect can be detected, which is mainly concentrated at the upper intersection between RCSB and RCAB. SVC and reinforcing bar demonstrate excellent seismic performance with no obvious damage.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.1
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• pp.55-67
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• 2022

The precast reinforced concrete frame system is a method for industrialization of construction. However, the seismic performance factor of this structural system is not explicitly clarified in some existing building codes. In this paper, the seismic performance factor for the existing precast concrete building frame systems with cast-in-situ reinforced shear walls were evaluated. Nonlinear behavior of the precast beam-column joints and cast-in-situ reinforced shear walls were considered in the modeling of the structures. The ATC-19's coefficient method was used for calculating the seismic performance factor and the FEMA P-695's approach was adopted for evaluating the accuracy of the computed seismic performance factor. The results showed that the over-strength factor varies from 2 to 2.63 and the seismic performance factor (R factor) varies from 5.1 to 8.95 concerning the height of the structure. Also, it was proved that all of the examined buildings have adequate safety against the collapse at the MCE level of earthquake, so the validity of R factors was confirmed. The obtained incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) results indicated that the minimum adjusted collapse margin ratio (ACMR) of the precast buildings representing the seismic vulnerability of the structures approximately equaled to 2.7, and pass the requirements of FEMA P-695.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.23-32
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• 2023

Reinforced concrete flat slab (RCFS) with columns is a standard gravity floor system for tall buildings in North America. Typically, RCFS-column connections are designed to resist gravity loads, and their contribution to resisting seismic forces is ignored. However, past experimental research has shown that RCFS-column connections have some strength and ductility, which may not be ignored. Advanced numerical models have been developed in the past to determine the nonlinear cyclic behavior of RCFS-column connections. However, these models are either too complicated for nonlinear dynamic analysis of an entire building or not developed to model the behavior of modern RCFS-column connections. This paper proposes a new nonlinear model suitable for modern RCFS-column connections. The numerical model is verified using experimental data of specimens with various material and reinforcement properties. A 40-story RC shear wall building was designed and analyzed to investigate the influence of RCFS on the global response of tall concrete buildings. The seismic responses of the building with and without the RCFS were modelled and compared. The results show that the modelling of RCFS has a significant impact on the inter-story drifts and force demands on both the seismic force-resisting and gravity elements.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.627-645
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• 2014

Using OpenSees as a framework, constitutive models of reinforced, prestressed and prestressed steel fiber concrete found by the panel tests have been implemented into a finite element program called Simulation of Concrete Structures (SCS) to predict the seismic behavior of shear-critical reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. The developed finite element program was validated by tests on prestressed steel fiber concrete beams under monotonic loading, post tensioned precast concrete column under reversed cyclic loading, framed shear walls under reversed cyclic loading or shaking table excitations, and a seven-story wall building under shake table excitations. The comparison of analytical results with test outcomes indicates good agreement.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.293-310
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• 2024

Ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) is a form of cement-based material that has a compressive strength above 150 MPa, excellent ductility, and superior durability. This composite material demonstrates innovation and has the potential to serve as a viable substitute for concrete constructions that are subjected to harsh environmental conditions. Over many decades, extensive research and progressive efforts have introduced several commercial UHPFRC compositions globally. These compositions have been specifically designed to cater to an increasing variety of applications and meet the rising need for building materials of superior quality. However, the effective manufacturing of UHPFRC relies on the composition of its materials, especially the inclusion of fiber content and the proportions in the mixture, resulting in a more compact and comparatively uniform packing of particles. UHPFRC has notable benefits in comparison to conventional concrete, yet its use is constrained by the dearth of design codes and the prohibitive expenses associated with its implementation. The study demonstrates that UHPFRC presents a viable, long-lasting option for improving sustainable construction. This is attributed to its outstanding strength properties and superior durability in resisting water and chloride ion permeability, freeze-thaw cycles, and carbonation. The analysis found that a rheology-based mixture design technique may be employed in the production of UHPFRC to provide enough flowability. The study also revealed that the use of deformed steel fibers has shown enhanced mechanical qualities in comparison to straight steel fibers. However, obstacles such as higher initial costs, the requirement for highly specialized personnel, and the absence of comprehensive literature on global UHPFRC standards that establish minimum strength criteria and testing requirements can hinder the widespread implication of UHPFRC. Finally, this review attempts to deepen our foundational conception of UHPFRC, encourages additional study and applications, and recommends an in-depth investigation of the mechanical and durability properties of UHPFRC to maximize its practicality.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.147-165
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• 2023

The paper contrasts conventional seismic design with a design that incorporates buckling-restrained bracing in three-dimensional reinforced concrete buildings (BRBs). The suboptimal structures may be found using the multi-objective chimp optimization algorithm (MEN-ChOA). Given the constraints and dimensions, ChOA suffers from a slow convergence rate and tends to become stuck in local minima. Therefore, the ChOA is improved by niching and evolutionary operators to overcome the aforementioned problems. In addition, a new technique is presented to compute seismic and dead loads that include all of a structure's parts in an algorithm for three-dimensional frame design rather than only using structural elements. The performance of the constructed multi-objective model is evaluated using 12 standard multi-objective benchmarks proposed in IEEE congress on evolutionary computation. Second, MEN-ChOA is employed in constructing several reinforced concrete structures by the Mexico City building code. The variety of Pareto optimum fronts of these criteria enables a thorough performance examination of the MEN-ChOA. The results also reveal that BRB frames with comparable structural performance to conventional moment-resistant reinforced concrete framed buildings are more cost-effective when reinforced concrete building height rises. Structural performance and building cost may improve by using a nature-inspired strategy based on MEN-ChOA in structural design work.