• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.73 no.1
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• pp.53-64
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• 2020

In different high seismic regions around the world, many non-ductile existing reinforced concrete frame buildings, built without adequate seismic detailing requirements, have been damaged or collapsed after past earthquakes. The assessment and the retrofit of these non-ductile concrete structures is crucial theme of research for all the scientific community of engineers. In particular, a careful assessment of the existing building is fundamental for understanding the failure mechanisms that govern the collapse of the structure or the achievement of the recommended limit states. Based on the seismic assessment, the best retrofit strategy can be designed and applied to the structure. A school building located in Avellino province (Italy) is the case study. The analysis of seismic vulnerability carried out on the mentioned building has highlighted deficiencies in both static and seismic load conditions. The retrofit of the building has been designed based on different retrofit options in order to show the real retrofit design developed from the engineers to achieve the seismic safety of the building. The retrofit costs associated to structural operations are calculated for each case and have been summed up to the costs of the in situ tests. The paper shows a real retrofit design case study in which the best solution is chosen based on the results in terms of structural performance and cost among the different retrofit options.

• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.449-458
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• 2018

Earthquakes have shown the vulnerability of unreinforced masonry (URM) structures. The aim of this research is to study a technique for in-plane seismic retrofitting of URM walls in which both diagonal and vertical steel strips are added to a single side of a URM wall. Specimens have been tested under quasi-static cyclic lateral load in combination with constant vertical load. The tests show that vertical and diagonal strips cause a significant increase in seismic capacity in terms of both strength (about 200%) and displacement at maximum (about 20%). Furthermore, this technique caused the failure modes of URM walls were influenced.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.104-110
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• 2016

The effect of a partially earth anchored cable system on the structural safety of a long span cable-stayed bridge under seismic and wind loads are examined during construction process. By assuming the FCM (free cantilever method) construction stages with structural vulnerability, a multi-mode spectral analysis and a multi-mode buffeting analysis are performed for specific seismic load and wind load, respectively. Results show that the wind load dominates the structural safety of a cable-stayed bridge during construction. And, the application of a partially earth anchored cable system can enhance structural safety under wind load since the maximum pylon moment in the model with partially earth anchored cable system is reduced by 49% under wind load. In contrast, the maximum pylon moment occurred by seismic load is only decreased by 8%.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.527-538
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• 2012

In seismic analyses of structures, additional eccentricity is introduced to take account for oscillations of random and unknown origins. In many codes of practice, the torsion about the vertical axis is considered through empirical accidental eccentricity formulation. Due to the random nature of structural systems, it is very difficult to evaluate the accidental eccentricity in a deterministic way and to specify its effect on the overall seismic response of structures. The aim of this study is to develop a procedure for the evaluation of the accidental eccentricity induced by uncertainties in stiffness and mass of structural members, using the neural network techniques coupled with Monte Carlo simulations. This method gives very interesting results for single story structures. For real structures, this method can be used as a tool to determine the accidental eccentricity in the seismic vulnerability studies of buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.359-374
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• 2017

The seismic events in Northern Italy, May 2012, have revealed the seismic vulnerability of typical Italian precast industrial buildings. The aim of this paper is to present a seismic fragility model for Italian RC precast buildings, to be used in earthquake loss estimation and seismic risk assessment by comparing two building typologies and three different codes: D.M. 3-03-1975, D.M. 16-01-1996 and current Italian building code that has been released in 2008. Based on geometric characteristics and design procedure applied, ten different building classes were identified. A Monte Carlo simulation was performed for each building class in order to generate the building stock used for the development of fragility curves trough analytical method. The probabilistic distributions of geometry were mainly obtained from data collected from 650 field surveys, while the material properties were deduced from the code in place at the time of construction or from expert opinion. The structures were modelled in 2D frameworks; since the past seismic events have identified the beam-column connection as the weakest element of precast buildings, two different modelling solutions were adopted to develop fragility curves: a simple model with post processing required to detect connection collapse and an innovative modelling solution able to reproduce the real behaviour of the connection during the analysis. Fragility curves were derived using both nonlinear static and dynamic analysis.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.99-123
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• 2015

In this study, structural vulnerability of reinforced concrete moment resisting frames (RC-MRFs) by considering the Iran-specific characteristics is investigated to manage the earthquake risk in terms of multicomponent seismic excitations. Low and medium rise RC-MRFs, which constitute approximately 80-90% of the total buildings stock in Iran, are focused in this fragility-based assessment. The seismic design of 3-12 story RC-MRFs are carried out according to the Iranian Code of Practice for Seismic Resistant Design of Buildings (Standard No. 2800), and the analytical models are formed accordingly in open source nonlinear platforms. Frame structures are categorized in three subclasses according to the specific characteristics of construction practice and the observed seismic performance after major earthquakes in Iran. Both far and near fields' ground motions have been considered in the fragility estimation. An optimal intensity measure (IM) called Sa, avg and beta probability distribution were used to obtain reliable fragility-based database for earthquake damage and loss estimation of RC buildings stock in urban areas of Iran. Nonlinear incremental dynamic analyses by means of lumped-parameter based structural models have been simulated and performed to extract the fragility curves. Approximate confidence bounds are developed to represent the epistemic uncertainties inherent in the fragility estimations. Consequently, it's shown that including vertical ground motion in the analysis is highly recommended for reliable seismic assessment of RC buildings.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.283-291
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• 2017

A large number of residential buildings in regions subjected to severe earthquakes do not have enough load carrying capacity. The most of them have been constructed without receiving any structural engineering attention. It is practically almost impossible to perform detailed experimental evaluation and analytical analysis for each building to determine their seismic vulnerability, because of time and cost constraints. This fact points to a need for a simple evaluation method that focuses on selection of buildings which do not have the life safety performance level by adopting the main requirements given in the seismic codes. This paper deals with seismic assessment of existing reinforced concrete residential buildings and contains an alternative simplified procedure for seismic evaluation of buildings. Accuracy of the proposed procedure is examined by taking into account existing 250 buildings. When the results of the proposed procedure are compared with those of the detailed analyses, it can be seen that the results are quite compatible. It is seen that the accuracy of the proposed procedure is about 80% according to the detailed analysis results of existing buildings. This accuracy percentage indicates that the proposed procedure in this paper can be easily applied to existing buildings to predict their seismic performance level as a first approach before implementing the detailed and complex analyses.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.731-753
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• 2018

The recent seismic events have led to concerns on safety and vulnerability of Reinforced Concrete Moment Resisting Frame "RC-MRF" buildings. The seismic design demands are greatly dependent on the computational tools, the inherent assumptions and approximations introduced in the modeling process. Thus, it is essential to assess the relative importance of implementing different modeling approaches and investigate the computed response sensitivity to the corresponding modeling assumptions. Many parameters and assumptions are to be justified for generation effective and accurate structural models of RC-MRF buildings to simulate the lateral response and evaluate seismic design demands. So, the present study aims to develop reliable finite element model through many refinements in modeling the various structural components. The effect of finite element modeling assumptions, analysis methods and code provisions on seismic response demands for the structural design of RC-MRF buildings are investigated. where, a series of three-dimensional finite element models were created to study various approaches to quantitatively improve the accuracy of FE models of symmetric buildings located in active seismic zones. It is shown from results of the comparative analyses that the use of a calibrated frame model which was made up of line elements featuring rigid offsets manages to provide estimates that match best with estimates obtained from a much more rigorous modeling approach involving the use of shell elements.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1325-1335
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• 2018

This study dealt with investigating the seismic performance of the smart and shape memory alloy (SMA) and magnets plus rubber-spring (MRS) dampers and their effects on the seismic resistance of multiple-span simply supported bridges. The rubber springs in the MRS dampers were pre-compressed. For this aim, a set of experimental works was performed together with developing nonlinear analytical models to investigate dynamic responses of the bridges subjected to earthquakes. Fragility analysis and probabilistic assessment were conducted to assess the seismic performance for the overall bridge system. Fragility curves were then generated for each model and were compared with those of as-built. Results showed dampers could increase the seismic capacity of bridges. Furthermore, from system fragility curves, use of damper models reduced the seismic vulnerability in comparison to the as-built bridge model. Although the SMA damper showed the best seismic performance, the MRS damper was the most appropriate one for the bridge in that the combination of magnetic friction and pre-compressed rubber springs was cheaper than the shape memory alloy, and had the similar capability of the damper.