• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권1호
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• pp.170-181
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• 2018

Because of the design and construction requirements, the nuclear structures need to maintain the structural integrity under both design state and extreme earthquake shaking. The base-isolation technology can significantly reduce the damages of structures under extreme earthquake events, and effectively protect the safeties of structures and internal equipment. This study proposes a base-isolation design for the AP1000 nuclear shield building on considering the performance requirements of the seismic isolation systems and devices of shield building. The seismic responses of isolated and nonisolated shield buildings subjected to design basis earthquake (DBE) shaking and beyond-design basis earthquake (BDBE) shaking are analyzed, and three different strategies for controlling the displacements subjected to BDBE shaking are performed. By comparing with nonisolated shield buildings, the floor acceleration spectra of isolated shield buildings, relative displacement, and base shear force are significantly reduced in high-frequency region. The results demonstrate that the base-isolation technology is an effective approach to maintain the structural integrity which subjected to both DBE and BDBE shaking. A displacement control design for isolation layers subjected to BDBE shaking, which adopts fluid dampers for controlling the horizontal displacement of isolation layer is developed. The effectiveness of this simple method is verified through numerical analysis.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제24권6호
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• pp.415-428
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• 2023

Low-cost techniques with seismic isolation performance and excellent resilience need to be explored in the case of rural low-rise buildings because of the limited buying power of rural residents. As an inexpensive and eco-friendly isolation bearing, scrap tire pads (STPs) have the issue of poor resilience. Thus, a seismic isolation system under a column (SISC) integrated with STP needs to be designed for the seismic protection of low-rise rural buildings. The SISC, which is based on a simple exterior design, maintains excellent seismic performance, while the mechanical behavior of the internal STP provides elastic resilience. The horizontal behaviors of the SISC are studied through load tests, and its mechanical properties and the intrinsic mechanism of the reset ability are discussed. Results indicate that the average residual displacement ratio was 24.59%, and the reset capability was enhanced. Comparative experimental and finite element analysis results also show that the load-displacement relationship of the SISC was essentially consistent. The dynamic characteristics of isolated and fixed-base buildings were compared by numerical assessment of the response control effects, and the SISC was found to have great seismic isolation performance. SISC can be used as a low-cost base isolation device for rural buildings in developing countries.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제8권5호
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• pp.1091-1111
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• 2015

Base isolation is an effective method for protecting structures against earthquake hazard. It elongates the period of vibration and introduces supplemental damping to the structural system. The stiffness, damping and displacement are coupled forcing the code seismic design procedure to be unnecessarily complicated. In addition, the force reduction factor -a key parameter in the design procedurehas not been well addressed by seismic design codes at the high levels of damping due to the pronounced difference between pseudo and actual accelerations. In this study, a comparison has been conducted to evaluate eight different methods, in the literature, for calculating the force reduction factor due to damping. Accordingly, a simplified seismic analysis procedure has been proposed based on the well documented N2 method. Comprehensive analysis has been performed for base-isolated structure models for direct application and verification of the proposed procedure. The results have been compared with those of the European code EC8, the nonlinear time history analysis and investigations in the literature, where good agreement has been reported. In addition, a discussion has been elaborated for the resulted response of the base-isolated structure models with respect to the dynamic characteristics of the base isolation system.

• 국제초고층학회논문집
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• 제6권3호
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• pp.227-235
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• 2017

This paper describes some of the challenges for structural design of a mid-story seismic isolated high-rise building, which is located near Tokyo station, completed in 2015. The building is a mixed-use complex and encompasses three volumes: one substructure including basement and lower floors, and a pair of seismic isolated superstructures on the substructure. One is a 136.5m high Main Tower (office use), and the other is a 98.5 m high South Tower (hotel use). The seismic isolation systems are arranged in the $3^{rd}$ floor of the Main Tower and $5^{th}$ floor of the South Tower, so that we call this isolation system as the mid-story seismic isolation. The primary goal of the structural design of this building was to secure high seismic safety against the largest earthquake expected in Tokyo. We adopted optimal seismic isolation equipment simulated by dynamic analysis to minimize building damage. On the other hand, wind-induced vibration of a seismic isolated high-rise building tends to be excited. To reduce the vibration, the following strategies were adopted respectively. In the Main Tower with a large wind receiving area, we adopted a mechanism that locks oil dampers at the isolation level during strong wind. In the South Tower, two tuned mass dampers (TMDs) are installed at the top of the building to control the vibration. In addition, our paper will also report the building performance evaluated for wind and seismic observation after completion of the building. In 2016, an earthquake of seismic intensity 3 (JMA scale) occurred twice in Tokyo. The acceleration reduction rate of the seismic isolation level due to these earthquakes was approximately 30 to 60%. These are also verified by dynamic analysis using observed acceleration data. Also, in April 2016, a strong wind exceeding the speed of 25m/s occurred in Tokyo. On the basis of the record at the strong wind, we confirmed that the locking mechanism of oil damper worked as designed.

• 국제초고층학회논문집
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.251-262
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• 2023

In response to China's "Regulations on the Management of Earthquake Resistance of Building Constructions" on the provision of eight types of important buildings to maintain functional after fortified earthquakes occur, "Guidelines for Seismic Design of post-quake functional buildings (Draft for Review)" distinguishes Class I and Class II buildings, and gives the performance objectives and seismic verification requirements for design earthquakes and severe earthquakes respectively. In this paper, a hospital and a school building are selected as examples to design according to the requirements of fortification of Intensity 8 and 7 respectively. Two design strategies, the seismic isolation scheme and energy dissipation scheme, are considered which are evaluated through elastic-plastic dynamic time-history analysis to meet the requirement of post-quake functional buildings. The results show that the seismic isolation design can meet the requirements in the above cases, and the energy dissipation scheme is difficult to meet the requirements of the "Guidelines" on floor acceleration in some cases, for which the scheme shall be made valid through the seismic resilience assessment. The research in this paper can provide a reference for designers to choose schemes for post-quake functional buildings.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제46권5호
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• pp.569-580
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• 2014

Seismic isolation is a viable strategy for protecting safety-related nuclear structures from the effects of moderate to severe earthquake shaking. Although seismic isolation has been deployed in nuclear structures in France and South Africa, it has not seen widespread use because of limited new build nuclear construction in the past 30 years and a lack of guidelines, codes and standards for the analysis, design and construction of isolation systems specific to nuclear structures. The funding by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission of a research project to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and MCEER/University at Buffalo facilitated the writing of a soon-to-be-published NUREG on seismic isolation. Funding of MCEER by the National Science Foundation led to research products that provide the technical basis for a new section in ASCE Standard 4 on the seismic isolation of safety-related nuclear facilities. The performance expectations identified in the NUREG and ASCE 4 for seismic isolation systems, and superstructures and substructures are described in the paper. Robust numerical models capable of capturing isolator behaviors under extreme loadings, which have been verified and validated following ASME protocols, and implemented in the open source code OpenSees, are introduced.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.261-272
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• 2020

Recent severe earthquakes in and around the vital public places worldwide indicate the severe vulnerability of ground excitation to be assailed. Reducing the effect of seismic lateral load in structural design is an important conception. Essentially, seismic isolation is required to shield the superstructure in such a way that the building superstructure would not move when the ground is shaking. This study explores the effectiveness, design, and practical feasibility of base isolation systems to reduce seismic demands on buildings of varying elevations. Thus, static and dynamic analyses were conducted based on site-specific bi-directional earthquakes for base-isolated as well as fixed-based buildings. Remarkably, it was discovered that isolators used in low-rise to high-rise structures tend to significantly decrease the structural responses of seismic prone buildings. The higher allowable horizontal displacement induces structural flexibility and ensure good structural health of the building stories. Reinforcement from vertical and horizontal members can be reduced in significant amounts for BI buildings. Thus, although incorporating base isolators increases the initial outlay, it considerably diminishes the total structural cost.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.25-43
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• 2016

The uneven distribution of rolling friction coefficient may lead to great uncertainty in the structural seismic isolation performance. This paper attempts to improve the isolation performance of a spring-damper-rolling isolation system by artificially making the uneven friction distribution to be concave. The rolling friction coefficient gradually increases when the isolator rolls away from the original position during an earthquake. After the spring-damper-rolling isolation system under different ground motions was calculated by a numerical analysis method, the system obtained more regular results than that of random uneven friction distributions. Results shows that the concave friction distribution can not only dissipate the earthquake energy, but also change the structural natural period. These functions improve the seismic isolation efficiency of the spring-damper-rolling isolation system in comparison with the random uneven distribution of rolling friction coefficient, and always lead to a relatively acceptable isolation state even if the actual earthquake significantly differs from the design earthquake.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.185-196
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• 2019

One of the shortcomings of seismic bridge design codes is the lack of clarity in defining the role of different seismic isolation systems with linear or nonlinear behavior in terms of R-factor. For example, based on AASHTO guide specifications for seismic isolation design, R-factor for all substructure elements of isolated bridges should be half of those expressed in the AASHTO standard specifications for highway bridges (i.e., R=3 for single columns and R=5 for multiple column bent) but not less than 1.50. However, no distinction is made between two commonly used types of seismic isolation devices, i.e., elastomeric rubber bearing (ERB) with linear behavior, and lead rubber bearing (LRB) with nonlinear behavior. In this paper, five existing bridges located in Iran with two types of deck-pier connection including ERB and LRB isolators, and two bridge models with monolithic deck-pier connection are developed and their R-factor values are assessed based on the Uang's method. The average R-factors for the bridges with ERB isolators are calculated as 3.89 and 4.91 in the longitudinal and transverse directions, respectively, which are not in consonance with the AASHTO guide specifications for seismic isolation design (i.e., R=3/2=1.5 for the longitudinal direction and R=5/2=2.5 for the transverse direction). This is a clear indicator that the code-prescribed R-factors are conservative for typical bridges with ERB isolators. Also for the bridges with LRB isolators, the average computed R-factors equal 1.652 and 2.232 in the longitudinal and transverse directions, respectively, which are in a good agreement with the code-specified R-factor values. Moreover, in the bridges with monolithic deck-pier connection, the average R-factor in the longitudinal direction is obtained as 2.92 which is close to the specified R-factor in the bridge design codes (i.e., 3), and in the transverse direction is obtained as 2.41 which is about half of the corresponding R-factor value in the specifications (i.e., 5).

• 한국지진공학회논문집
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.89-95
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• 2013

Structures in a nuclear power system are designed to be elastic even under an earthquake excitation. However a structural component such as an isolator shows inelastic behavior inherently. For the seismic assessment of nonlinear structures, response history analysis should be performed. In this study, the response of base isolation system was analyzed by response history analysis for the seismic performance assessment. Firstly, several seismic assessment criteria for a nuclear power plant structure were reviewed for the nonlinear response history analysis. Based on these criteria, the spectrum matched ground motion generation method modifying a seed earthquake ground motion time history was adjusted. Using these spectrum matched accelerograms, the distribution of displacement responses of the simplified base isolation system was evaluated. The resulting seismic responses excited by the modified ground motion time histories and the synthesized time history generated by stochastic approach were compared. And the response analysis of the base isolation system considering the different intensities in each orthogonal direction was performed.