• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.305-312
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• 2018

Significant research efforts were undertaken to evaluate seismic performance of vertically irregular buildings on flat ground. However, there is scarcity of study on seismic performance of buildings on hill slopes. The present study attempts to investigate seismic behaviour of reinforced concrete irregular stepback building frames with different configurations on sloping ground. Based on extensive regression study of free vibration results of four hundred seventeen frames with varying ground slope, number of story and span number, a modification is proposed to the code based empirical fundamental time period estimation formula. The modification to the fundamental time period estimation formula is a simplified function of ground slope and a newly introduced equivalent height parameter to reflect the effect of stiffness and mass irregularity. The derived empirical formula is successfully validated with various combinations of slope and framing configurations of buildings. The correlation between the predicted and the actual time period obtained from the free vibration analysis results are in good agreement. The various statistical parameters e.g., the root mean square error, coefficient of determination, standard average error generally used for validation of such regression equations also ensure the prediction capability of the proposed empirical relation with reasonable accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.425-438
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• 2007

Large changes in stiffness associated with cracking and yielding of reinforced concrete sections may be expected to occur during the dynamic response of reinforced concrete frames to earthquake ground shaking. These changes in stiffness in stories that experience cracking might be expected to cause relatively large peak interstory drift ratios. If so, accounting for such changes would add complexity to seismic design procedures. This study evaluates changes in an index parameter to establish whether this effect is significant. The index, known as the coefficient of distortion (COD), is defined as the ratio of peak interstory drift ratio and peak roof drift ratio. The sensitivity of the COD is evaluated statistically for five- and nine-story reinforced concrete frames having either uniform story heights or a tall first story. A suite of ten ground motion records was used; this suite was scaled to five intensity levels to cause varied degrees of damage to the concrete frame elements. Ground motion intensity was found to cause relatively small changes in mean CODs; the changes were most pronounced for changes in suite scale factor from 0.5 to 1 and from 1 to 4. While these changes were statistically significant in several cases, the magnitude of the change was sufficiently small that values of COD may be suggested for use in preliminary design that are independent of shaking intensity. Consequently, design limits on interstory drift ratio may be implemented by limiting the peak roof drift in preliminary design.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.659-664
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• 2002

New design method about the spread footing was developed using only soil and geosynthetics. This footing will be able to replace the concrete footing at constructing the foundation of small structures. As shown in Fig-3(b), after excavating the ground in semicircular shape, geosynthetics is layed on the semicircular shape of ground and let the soil filled. Geosynthetics of upper side are fixed tightly each other It can be thought to be a kind of great bag with semicircular shape. We performed two kinds of experiments to investigate the deformation and the failure shape of spread footing reinforced by geosynthetics. First, after making model ground with aluminium rods, the lattice point of 1cm ${\times}$ 1cm size of the side of aluminium rods have been painted with various kinds of colors. We have observed the movement of painted rods during loading. Second, we have taken pictures about failure process using B-shutter method. Analysing the behavior of model ground reinforced in a semicircular shape, we could know the reinforced one has much greater and wider plastic area than unreinforced one at failure. Based on the experimental results, new design method was proposed, which has a possibility to apply at the field works.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.918-927
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• 2008

The problems associated with constructing high-speed concrete track embankments over soft compressible soil has lead to the development and/or extensive use of many of the ground improvement techniques used today. Drains, surcharge loading, and geosynthetic reinforcement, have all been used to solve the settlement and embankment stability issues associated with construction on soft soils. Geosynthetic-reinforced embankment supporting piles method consist of vertical columns that are designed to transfer the load of the embankment through the soft compressible soil layer to a firm foundation and one or more layers of geosynthetic reinforcement placed between the top of the columns and the bottom of the embankment. In the paper, the evaluations of a seismic performance of geosynthetic-reinforced embankment piles for a ultra soft ground during earthquake were studied. the equivalent linear analysis was performed by SHAKE for soft ground. A seismic performance analysis of Piles was performed by GROUP PILE and PLAXIS for geosynthetic-reinforced embankment piles. Guidelines is required for pile displacement during earthquake. Conclusions of the studies come up with a idea for soil stiffness, conditions of pile cap, pile length and span.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.305-318
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• 2020

Stone columns are widely used to treat soft clay ground. Optimizing the design of stone columns based on cost-effectiveness is always an attractive subject in the practice of ground treatment. In this paper, the design of stone columns is optimized using the concept of robust geotechnical design. Standard deviation of failure probability, which is a system response of concern of the stone column-reinforced foundation, is used as a measure of the design robustness due to the uncertainty in the coefficient of variation (COV) of the noise factors in practice. The failure probability of a stone column-reinforced foundation can be readily determined using Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) based on the settlements of the stone column-reinforced foundation, which are evaluated by a deterministic method. A framework based on the concept of robust geotechnical design is proposed for determining the most preferred design of stone columns considering multiple objectives including safety, cost and design robustness. This framework is illustrated with an example, a stone column-reinforced foundation under embankment loading. Based on the outcome of this study, the most preferred design of stone columns is obtained.

• Composites Research
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 2017

In this paper, the inter-lamina shear strength (ILSS) of multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWNT) reinforced carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) and thin-ply composites were verified under low earth orbit (LEO) space environment. CFRP, MWNT reinforced CFRP, thin-ply CFRP and MWNT reinforced thin-ply CFRP were tested after aging by using accelerated ground simulation equipment. The used ground simulation equipment can simulate high vacuum ($2.5{\times}10^{-6}torr$), atomic oxygen (AO, $9.15{\times}10^{14}atoms/cm^2{\cdot}s$), ultraviolet light (UV, 200 nm wave length) and thermal cycling ($-70{\sim}100^{\circ}C$) simultaneously. The duration of aging experiment was twenty hours, which is an equivalent duration to that of STS-4 space shuttle condition. After the aging experiment, ILSS were measured at room temperature ($27^{\circ}C$), high temperature ($100^{\circ}C$) and low temperature ($-100^{\circ}C$) to verify the effect of operation temperature. The MWNT and thin-ply shows good improvement of ILSS at ground condition especially with the thin-ply. And after LEO exposure large degradation of ILSS was observed at MWNT added composite due to the thermal cycle. And the degradation rate was much higher under the high temperature condition. But, at the low temperature condition, the ILSS was largely recovered due to the matrix toughening effect.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2000.03b
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• pp.207-214
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• 2000

Sand Compaction Pile method is one of the widely used ground improvement techniques at loose sand or soft clay ground in Asian countries. However, due to environmental and economical problems concerning shortage of sand resources alternative materials are needed to substitute sand for SCP. This study is on the applicability of slag as an alternative material SCP. Consolidation and direct shear test are performed for the slag-clay composite specimens to find out the positive effects of consolidation rate and shear resistance of slag reinforced ground. The result shows that slag has similar effects with sand in consolidation and shear resistance behavior in composite ground, which says slag can be used as alternative material of sand for SCP.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.482-491
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• 2009

In this study, the mechanical behavior of very soft ground that is reinforced on the surface has been investigated with the aid of a series of numerical analyses. Key material properties of each dredged soft ground, reinforcement and backfill sand mat have been parametrically estimated in the numerical analysis. Along with the result of the study previously performed, a series of in-situ loading conditions and settlement exerted by surface reinforcing operation by construction vehicles has been numerically simulated. These result have been used to evaluate the limit bearing capacity for the unreinforced and reinforced soft ground. Also, the results of the numerical analysis obtained in this research were compared with Yamanouchi's empirical correlation for the limit bearing capacity. Engineering charts listed in this paper for estimating the limit bearing capacity provide field engineers with preliminary design tool for surface reinforcement of very soft ground.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.99-112
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• 2023

This paper investigates the influences of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) on the seismic behavior of two-dimensional reinforced concrete moment-resisting frames subjected to Far-Field Ground Motion (FFGM) and Near-Field Ground Motion (NFGM). For this purpose, the nonlinear modeling of 7, 10, and 15-story reinforced concrete moment resisting frames were developed in Open Systems for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OpenSees) software. Effects of SSI were studied by simulating Beam on Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) and the soil type as homogenous medium-dense. Generally, the building resistance to seismic loads can be explained in terms of Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA); therefore, IDA curves are presented in this study. For comparison, the fragility evaluation is subjected to NFGM and FFGM as proposed by Quantification of Building Seismic Performance Factors (FEMA P-695). The seismic performance of Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings with fixed and flexible foundations was evaluated to assess the probability of collapse. The results of this paper demonstrate that SSI and NFGM have significantly influenced the probability of failure of the RC frames. In particular, the flexible-base RC buildings experience higher Spectral acceleration (Sa) compared to the fixed-base ones subjected to FFGM and NFGM.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.53-61
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• 2017

Seabed settlement and erosion sometimes occurr when a artificial reef is installed in soft seabed. Therefore, this study carried out CBR test and water tank settlement test to investigate settlement behavior of artificial reef according to reinforcement characteristics such as reinforced types and reinforced area. Soil types of ground are sand, silt and clay deposits. Three reinforced types were prepared: unreinforced, geogrid and hybrid bamboo mat(HBM) with different reinforced area. Laboratory test results indicated that reinforced artificial reef improved bearing capacity of ground and reduced settlement as reinforced area increased. Especially, reinforced HBM provided more bearing capacity and less settlement than reinforced geogrid.