• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.291-300
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• 1999

An idealized analytical model is proposed to estimate the effects of restrainer upon global response behaviors of a bridge system under seismic excitations. Pounding actions between adjacent vibration units and friction at movable supports are introduced in addition to other phenomena such as nonlinear behaviors of pier, motions of the foundation and abutment to achieve the better prediction of the bridge motion. The applied restrainer is assumed to be a dead-band system, which has the force clearance and the linear-elastic force. Using the proposed model, the dynamic characteristics of a bridge system retrofitted by restrainers is examined, and the effects of stiffness and clearance length of restrainer is also investigated. The main effect of the application of restrainers is found to reduce the relative displacements and the trend becomes greater with the shorter clearance length except between pier units. It is found that the relative displacements between abutment and adjacent pier units are decreased as the stiffness of restrainer increases, but almost independent upon the stiffness increments of restrainer. However, the relative displacements between pier units tend to be increased due to the applications of the restrainers.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.183-200
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• 2020

Connection of adjacent buildings with stiff links is an efficient approach for seismic pounding mitigation. However, use of highly rigid links might alter the torsional response in asymmetric plans and although this was mentioned in the literature, no quantitative study has been done before to investigate the condition numerically. In this paper, the effect of rigid coupling on the elastic lateral-torsional response of two adjacent one-story column-type buildings has been studied by comparison to uncoupled structures. Three cases are considered, including two similar asymmetric structures, two adjacent asymmetric structures with different dynamic properties and a symmetric system adjacent to an adjacent asymmetric one. After an acceptable validation against the actual earthquake, the traditional random vibration method has been utilized for dynamic analysis under Ideal white noise input. Results demonstrate that rigid coupling may increase or decrease the rotational response, depending on eccentricities, torsional-to-lateral stiffness ratios and relative uncoupled lateral stiffness of adjacent buildings. Results are also discussed for the case of using identical cross section for all columns supporting eachplan. In contrast to symmetric systems, base shear increase in the stiffer building may be avoided when the buildings lateral stiffness ratio is less than 2. However, the eccentricity increases the rotation of the plans for high rotational stiffness of the buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.297-319
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• 2013

Two destructive earthquakes occurred on October 23 and November 9, 2011 in Van province of Turkey. The damage in residential units shows significant deviation from the expectation of decreasing damage with increasing distance to epicenter. The most damaged settlement Ercis has the same distance to the epicenter with Muradiye, where no damage occurred while relatively less damage observed in Van having half distance. These three cities seem to have resembling soil conditions. If the damages are evaluated: joint failures and insufficient lap splice lengths are observed to be the main causes of the total collapses in RC buildings. Additionally, low concrete strength, reinforcement detailing mistakes, soft story, heavy overhang, pounding and short columns are among other damage reasons. Examples of damages due to non-structural elements are also given. Remarkable points about seismic damages are: collapsed buildings with shear-walls, heavily damaged buildings despite adequate concrete strength due to detailing mistakes, undamaged two-story adobe buildings close to totally collapsed RC ones and undamaged structural system in buildings with heavily damaged non-structural elements. On the contrary of the common belief that buildings with shear-walls are immune to total collapse among civil engineers, collapse of Gedikbulak primary school is a noteworthy example.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.277-297
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• 2014

Since the isolation bearings undergo large displacements in base-isolated structures, impact with adjacent structures is inevitable. Therefore, in this investigation, the effect of impact on seismic response of isolated structures mounted on double concave friction pendulum (DCFP) bearings subjected to near field ground motions is considered. A non-linear viscoelastic model of collision is used to simulate structural pounding more accurately. 2-, 4- and 8-story base-isolated buildings adjacent to fixed-base structures are modeled and the coupled differential equations of motion related to these isolated systems are solved in the MATLAB environment using the SIMULINK toolbox. The variation of seismic responses such as base shear, displacement in the isolation system and superstructure (top floor) is computed to study the impact condition. Also, the effects of variation of system parameters: isolation period, superstructure period, size of seismic gap between two structures, radius of curvature of the sliding surface and friction coefficient of isolator are contemplated in this study. It is concluded that the normalized base shear, bearing and top floor displacement increase due to impact with adjacent structure. When the distance between two structures decreases, the base shear and displacement increase comparing to no impact condition. Besides, the increase in friction coefficient difference also causes the normalized base shear and displacement in isolation system and superstructure increase in comparison with bi-linear hysteretic behavior of base isolation system. Totally, the comparison of results indicates that the changes in values of friction coefficient have more significant effects on 2-story building than 4- and 8-story buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.151-164
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• 2017

This article aims to investigate the possible retrofitting of a deficient building with soft story failure mode by connecting it to an adjacent building which is designed based on current code with friction dampers at all floors. Low cost and high performance reliability along with significant energy dissipation pertaining to stable hysteretic loops may be considered in order to choose the proper damper for connecting adjacent buildings. After connecting two neighbouring floors by friction dampers, the sliding forces of dampers at various stories are set in two arrangements: uniform sliding force and then variable sliding force. In order to account for the stochastic nature of the seismic events, incremental dynamic analyses are employed prior and after the installation of the friction dampers at the various floors. Based on these results, fragility curves and mean annual rate of exceedance of serviceability and ultimate limit states are obtained. The results of this study show that the collapse mode of the deficient building can affect the optimum arrangement of sliding forces of friction dampers at Collapse Prevention (CP) performance level. In particular, the Immediate Occupancy (IO) performance level is not tangible to the sliding force arrangement and it depends solely on sliding force value. Generally it can be claimed that this rehabilitation scheme can turn the challenge of pounding two adjacent buildings into the opportunity of dissipating a large amount of the seismic input energy by the friction dampers, thus improving significantly the poor seismic performance of the deficient structure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.127-139
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• 2019

Residual drifts after an earthquake can incur huge repair costs and might need to replace the infrastructure because of its non-reparability. Proper functioning of bridges is also essential in the aftermath of an earthquake. In order to mitigate pounding and unseating damage of bridges subjected to earthquakes, a self-adaptive Ni-Ti shape memory alloy (SMA)-cable-based frictional sliding bearing (SMAFSB) is proposed considering self-adaptive centering, high energy dissipation, better fatigue, and corrosion resistance from SMA-cable component. The developed novel bearing is associated with the properties of modularity, replaceability, and earthquake isolation capacity, which could reduce the repair time and increase the resilience of highway bridges. To evaluate the super-elasticity of the SMA-cable, pseudo-static tests and numerical simulation on the SMA-cable specimens with a diameter of 7 mm are conducted and one dimensional (1D) constitutive hysteretic model of the SMAFSB is developed considering the effects of gap, self-centering, and high energy dissipation. Two types of the SMAFSB (i.e., movable and fixed SMAFSBs) are applied to a two-span continuous reinforced concrete (RC) bridge. The seismic vulnerabilities of the RC bridge, utilizing movable SMAFSB with the constant gap size of 60 mm and the fixed SMAFSBs with different gap sizes (e.g., 0, 30, and 60 mm), are assessed at component and system levels, respectively. It can be observed that the fixed SMAFSB with a gap of 30 mm gained the most retrofitting effect among the three cases.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.39-53
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• 2021

By means of installing sloped rolling-type seismic isolators (SRI), the horizontal acceleration transmitted to the to-be-protected object above can be effectively and significantly reduced under external disturbance. To prevent the maximum horizontal displacement response of SRI from reaching a threshold, designing large and conservative damping force for SRI might be required, which will also enlarge the transmitted acceleration response. In a word, when adopting seismic isolation, minimizing acceleration or displacement responses is always a trade-off. Therefore, this paper proposes that by exploiting the possible information provided by an earthquake early warning system, the damping force applied to SRI which can better control both acceleration and displacement responses might be determined in advance and accordingly adjusted in a semi-active control manner. By using a large number of ground motion records with peak ground acceleration not less than 80 gal, the numerical results present that the maximum horizontal displacement response of SRI is highly correlated with and proportional to some important parameters of input excitations, the velocity pulse energy rate and peak velocity in particular. A control law employing the basic form of hyperbolic tangent function and two objective functions are considered in this study for conceptually developing suitable control algorithms. Compared with the numerical results of simply designing a constant, large damping factor to prevent SRI from pounding, adopting the recommended control algorithms can have more than 60% reduction of acceleration responses in average under the excitations. More importantly, it is effective in reducing acceleration responses under approximately 98% of the excitations.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.21-32
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• 2004

A Seismic analysis procedure of bi-directional brideg motions is developed by using mechanical bridge model. A three-dimensional mechanical model can consider major phenomena under bi-directional seismic excitations, such as nonlinear pier motion under biaxial bending, pounding and bearing damage due to the rotaion of the superstructure, etc. The analyses utilizing the uni-directional and the bi-directional bridge model for the 3-span simply supported bridge are then performed. The seismic responses in two cases are examined and compared by investigating the relative displacements of each superstructure to both ground and adjacent superstructures and the restoring forces of RC pier. The analysis using either the uni-directional model or bi-directional model is acceptable for estimating the displacement responses of a bridge, but the bi-directional analysis is found to give more conservative results for resisting forces of RC piers. To make general conclusions, therefore, the analysis using the bi-directional bridge model should be performed in evaluating the seismic safety of bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.401-416
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• 2024

Long-span structures, such as bridges, can experience different seismic excitations at the supports due to spatially variability of ground motion. Regarding current bridge designing codes, it is just EC 2008 that suggested some regulations to consider it and in the other codes almost ignored while based on some previous studies it is found that the effect of mentioned issue could not be neglected. The current study aimed to perform a comprehensive study about the effect of spatially varying ground motions on the dynamic response of a reinforced concrete bridge under asynchronous input motions considering soil-structure interactions. The correlated ground motions were generated by an introduced method that contains all spatially varying components, and imposed on the supports of the finite element model under different load scenarios. Then the obtained results from uniform and non-uniform excitations were compared to each other. In addition, the effect of soil-structure interactions involved and the corresponding results compared to the previous results. Also, to better understand the seismic response of the bridge, the responses caused by pseudo-static components decompose from the total response. Finally, an incremental dynamic analysis was performed to survey the non-linear behavior of the bridge under assumed load scenarios. The outcomes revealed that the local site condition plays an important role and strongly amplifies the responses. Furthermore, it was found that a combination of wave-passage and strong incoherency severely affected the responses of the structure. Moreover, it has been found that the pseudo-static component's contribution increase with increasing incoherent parameters. In addition, regarding the soil condition was considered for the studied bridge, it was found that a combination of spatially varying ground motions and soil-structure interactions effects could make a very destructive scenarios like, pounding and unseating.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.759-768
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• 2015

The ground motions of large dimensional structures such as long span bridges at different stations during an earthquake, are inevitably different, which is known as the ground motion spatial variation effect. There are many causes that may result in the spatial variability in seismic ground motion, e.g., the wave passage effect due to the different arrival times of waves at different locations; the loss of coherency due to seismic waves scattering in the heterogeneous medium of the ground; the site amplification effect owing to different local soil properties. In previous researches, the site amplification effects have not been considered or considered by a single-layered soil model only. In this study, however, the ground motion amplification and filtering effects are evaluated by multi-layered soil model. Spatially varying ground motion at the sites with different number of layers, depths, and soil characteristics are generated and the variation characteristics of ground motion time histories according to the correlation of coherency loss function and soil conditions are evaluated. For the bridge system composed of two unit bridges, seismic behavior characteristics are analyzed using the generated seismic waves as input ground motion. Especially, relative displacement due to coherency loss and site effect which can cause the unseating and pounding between girders are evaluated. As a result, considering the soil conditions of each site are always important and should not be neglected for an accurate structural response analysis.