• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.289-308
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• 2018

Numerous urban seismic vulnerability studies have recognized pounding as one of the main risks due to the restricted separation distance between neighboring structures. The pounding effects on the adjacent buildings could extend from slight non-structural to serious structural damage that could even head to a total collapse of buildings. Therefore, an assessment of the seismic pounding hazard to the adjacent buildings is superficial in future building code calibrations. Thus, this study targets are to draw useful recommendations and set up guidelines for potential pounding damage evaluation for code calibration through a numerical simulation approach for the evaluation of the pounding risks on adjacent buildings. A numerical simulation is formulated to estimate the seismic pounding effects on the seismic response demands of adjacent buildings for different design parameters that include: number of stories, separation distances; alignment configurations, and then compared with nominal model without pounding. Based on the obtained results, it has been concluded that the severity of the pounding effects depends on the dynamic characteristics of the adjacent buildings and the input excitation characteristics, and whether the building is exposed to one or two-sided impacts. Seismic pounding among adjacent buildings produces greater acceleration and shear force response demands at different story levels compared to the no pounding case response demands.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.77-85
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• 2020

In this study, the seismic fragility curve according to the boundary conditions is created for a two-pylon concrete cable-stayed bridge, and the effect of the boundary conditions on the seismic fragility of the target bridge is evaluated. An analysis model for the target bridge is constructed using Midas Civil, and a nonlinear time history analysis is performed by applying the fiber element, concrete and rebar material models. The boundary conditions between the pylon and the stiffened girder are classified into four types: rigid, unconstrained, pot bearing, and seismic isolation bearing, and the seismic fragility curves are created for each boundary condition. The plastic hinge section of the pylon, the connection part, and the cable are selected as weak members, and the earthquake vulnerability curve is created for them. As a result of the analysis, it is found that the seismic isolation bearing model shows the lowest damage probability in the pylon and the connection part, and the seismic fragility of the cable is less affected by the boundary conditions than other members.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.405-416
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• 2023

Recent seismic activities in countries like China and Turkey have underscored the widespread and severe damages that earthquakes can inflict globally. Being situated in a seismically active zone, South Korea can no longer regard itself as immune to earthquake hazards, necessitating the urgent adoption of proactive measures against such threats. The government has been proactive in evaluating, formulating processes, and methods for the seismic retrofitting of public buildings lacking in earthquake resistance. However, enforcement mechanisms for privately-owned apartment complexes are absent, and in the face of insufficient previous research and guidelines, preemptive measures for public safety remain alarmingly inadequate. With over 48% of residential structures in Korea aged over 30 years, and apartment complexes constituting more than 80% of these, the gravity of the situation is undeniable. This study deduces key factors for seismic retrofitting of apartment buildings like earthquake zones, soil type, building significance, aging degree, vulnerability, etc., based on building seismic design codes. It further proposes an algorithm for a more succinct and efficient determination of the priority of seismic reinforcements for apartment buildings.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.381-394
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• 2003

While constructing multistorey buildings with reinforced concrete framed structures it is a common practice to provide parking space for vehicles at the ground floor level. This floor will generally consist of open frames without any infilled walls and is called an open-storey. From a post disaster damage survey carried out, it was noticed that during the January 26, 2001 Bhuj (Gujarat, India) earthquake, a large number of reinforced concrete framed buildings with open-storey at ground floor level, suffered extensive damage and in some cases catastrophic collapse. This has brought into sharp focus the need to carry out systematic studies on the seismic vulnerability of such buildings. Determination of vulnerability requires realistic structural response estimations taking into account the stochasticity in the loading and the system parameters. The stochastic finite element method can be effectively used to model the random fields while carrying out such studies. This paper presents the details of stochastic finite element analysis of a five-storey three-bay reinforced concrete framed structure with open-storey subjected to standard seismic excitation. In the present study, only the stochasticity in the system parameters is considered. The stochastic finite element method used for carrying out the analysis is based on perturbation technique. Each random field representing the stochastic geometry/material property is discretised into correlated random variables using spatial averaging technique. The uncertainties in geometry and material properties are modelled using the first two moments of the corresponding parameters. In evaluating the stochastic response, the cross-sectional area and Young' modulus are considered as independent random fields. To study the influence of correlation length of random fields, different correlation lengths are considered for random field discretisation. The spatial expectations and covariances for displacement response at any time instant are obtained as the output. The effect of open-storey is modelled by suitably considering the stiffness of infilled walls in the upper storey using cross bracing. In order to account for changes in soil conditions during strong motion earthquakes, both fixed and hinged supports are considered. The results of the stochastic finite element based seismic analysis of reinforced concrete framed structures reported in this paper demonstrate the importance of considering the effect of open-storey with appropriate support conditions to estimate the realistic response of buildings subjected to earthquakes.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.77-83
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• 2019

Upon installing a seismic isolation device on a nuclear power plant, the device takes on the suppression of seismic loads. This is expected to bring about a larger displacement than what is seen prior to the installation of the seismic isolation device. Depending on the displacement change, the seismic risk for some equipment can increase. Particularly in case of the piping system, which is used for connecting the structure isolated from seismic events with common structures, the seismic risk is expected to rise significantly. In this study, the limit state of the steel pipe tee, which is a vulnerability part of the nuclear power plant piping system, was defined as leakage, and an in-plane cyclic loading test was conducted. As it is difficult to measure the moment and rotation of the steel pipe tee using the conventional sensors, an image signal was used. This study proposed a leakage line and low-cycle fatigue curves using the relationship between the moment and the rotation of a 3-inch steel pipe tee.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.791-818
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• 2015

RC buildings constitute the prevailing type of construction in earthquake-prone region like Kathmandu Valley. Most of these building constructions were based on conventional methods. In this context, the present paper studied the seismic behaviour of existing RC buildings in Kathmandu Valley. For this, four representative building structures with different design and construction, namely a building: (a) representing the non-engineered construction (RC1 and RC2) and (b) engineered construction (RC3 and RC4) has been selected for analysis. The dynamic properties of the case study building models are analyzed and the corresponding interaction with seismic action is studied by means of non-linear analyses. The structural response measures such as capacity curve, inter-storey drift and the effect of geometric non-linearities are evaluated for the two orthogonal directions. The effect of plan and vertical irregularity on the performance of the structures was studied by comparing the results of two engineered buildings. This was achieved through non-linear dynamic analysis with a synthetic earthquake subjected to X, Y and $45^{\circ}$ loading directions. The nature of the capacity curve represents the strong impact of the P-delta effect, leading to a reduction of the global lateral stiffness and reducing the strength of the structure. The non-engineered structures experience inter-storey drift demands higher than the engineered building models. Moreover, these buildings have very low lateral resistant, lesser the stiffness and limited ductility. Finally, a seismic safety assessment is performed based on the proposed drift limits. Result indicates that most of the existing buildings in Nepal exhibit inadequate seismic performance.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.569-585
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• 2016

This paper highlights a case study that investigates the behaviour of existing bridge, West Terrace Bridge, induced by horizontal seismic loading. Unfortunately the lack of past information related to seismic activity within the NSW region has made it difficult to understand better the capacity of the structure if Earthquake occurs. The research was conducted through the University of Western Sydney in conjunction with Railcorp Australia, as part of disaster reduction preparedness program. The focus of seismic analyses was on the assessment of stress behaviour, induced by cyclic horizontal/vertical displacements, within the concrete slab and steel truss of the bridge under various Earthquake Year Return Intervals (YRI) of 1-100, 1-200, 1-250, 1-500, 1-800, 1-1000, 1-1500, 1-2000 and 1-2500. Furthermore the stresses and displacements were rigorously analysed through a parametric study conducted using different boundary conditions. The numerical analysis of the concrete slab and steel truss were performed through the finite element software, ABAQUS. The field measurements and observation had been used to validate the results drawn from the finite element simulation. It was illustrated that under a YRI of 1/1000 the bottom chord of the steel truss failed as the stress induced surpassed the ultimate stress capacity and the horizontal displacement exceeded the allowable displacement measured in the field observations whereas the vertical displacement remained within the previously observed limitations. Furthermore the parametric studies in this paper demonstrate that a change in boundary conditions alleviated the stress distribution throughout the structure allowing it to withstand a greater load induced by the earthquake YRI but ultimately failed when the maximum earthquake loading was applied. Therefore it was recommended to provide a gap of 50mm on the end of the concrete slab to allow the structure to displace without increasing the stress in the structure. Finally, this study has proposed a design chart to showcase the failure mode of the bridge when subjected to seismic loading.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.29-36
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• 2014

Under the situation that the seismic vulnerability are a worsening problem in many world's megacities, the disaster preparedness including earthquake hazards is a matter of primary concern in the capital city of Korea, Seoul. Especially, because it is hard to move or dismantle the architectural heritages, the mitigation of earthquake damages is potentially more difficult than other structures. Moreover, in order to decide the proper preparedness plan against future earthquakes, it is very important to understand how soils pass the seismic waves to architectural heritages. In this paper, therefore, the ground condition and depth of bedrock was investigated by the MASW-method at heritages located in Seoul. Then one-dimensional seismic response analysis was conducted based on the distribution of shear wave velocity. As the major result of analyses, peak acceleration, site amplification factor and natural period are proposed in each site for recurrence period.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.7_spc
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• pp.435-441
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• 2016

The Korean peninsula has known as a minor-to-moderate seismic region. However, some recent studies had shown that the maximum possible earthquake magnitude in the region is approximately 6.3-6.5. Therefore, a seismic vulnerability assessment of the existing infrastructures considering ground motions in Korea is necessary. In this study, we developed seismic fragility curves for a continuous steel box girder bridge and two typical transmission towers, in which a set of seven artificial and natural ground motions recorded in South Korea is used. A finite element simulation framework, OpenSees, is utilized to perform nonlinear time history analyses of the bridge and a commercial software, SAP2000, is used to perform time history analyses of the transmission towers. The fragility curves based on Korean ground motions were then compared with the fragility curves generated using worldwide ground motions to evaluate the effect of the two ground motion groups on the seismic fragility curves of the structures. The results show that both non-isolated and base-isolated bridges are less vulnerable to the Korean ground motions than to worldwide earthquakes. Similarly to the bridge case, the transmission towers are safer during Korean motions than that under worldwide earthquakes in terms of fragility functions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2018

Seismic fragility curves of concrete cylindrical tanks are determined using the finite element method. Vulnerabilities including sloshing of contents, tensile cracking and compression failure of the tank wall due to bending are accounted for. Effects of wall flexibility, fixity at the base, and height-diameter ratio on the response are investigated. Tall, medium and squat tanks are considered. The dynamic analysis is implemented using the horizontal components of consistent earthquakes. The study shows that generally taller tanks are more vulnerable to all of the failure modes considered. Among the modes of failure, the bending capacity of wall was shown to be the critical design parameter.