• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.287-299
• /
• 2022

Rather than using smartphones as seismometers with designated locations and orientations, this study proposes to employ crowds' smartphones in buildings to perform fast safety assessment of buildings. The principal advantage of using crowds' smartphones is the potential to monitor the safety of millions of buildings without hardware costs, installation labor, and long-term maintenance. This study's goal is to measure the maximum interstory drift ratios during earthquake excitation using crowds' smartphones. Beacons inside the building are required to provide the location and relevant building information for the smartphones via Bluetooth. Wi-Fi Direct is employed between nearby smartphones to conduct peer-to-peer time synchronization and exchange the acceleration data measured. An algorithm to align the orientation between nearby smartphones is proposed, and the performance of the orientation alignment, interstory drift measurement, and damage level estimation are studied numerically. Finally, the proposed approach's performance is verified using large-scale shaking table tests of a scaled steel building. The results presented in this study illustrate the potential to use crowds' smartphones with the proposed approach to record building motions during earthquakes and use those data to estimate buildings' safety based on the interstory drift ratios measured.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.86 no.1
• /
• pp.29-48
• /
• 2023

Pounding happens when contiguous structures with differing heights vibrate out of line caused by a seismic activity. The situation is aggravated due to the insufficient separation gap between the structures which can lead to the crashing of the buildings or total collapse of an edifice. Countries around the world have compiled building standards to address the pounding issue. One of the strategies recommended is the introduction of the separation gap between structures. AS1170.4-2007 is an Australian standard that requires 1% of the building height as a minimum separation gap between buildings to preclude pounding. This article presents experimental and numerical tests to determine the adequacy of this specification to prevent the occurrence of seismic pounding between steel frame structures under near-field and far-field earthquakes. The results indicated that the recommended minimum separation gap based on the Australian Standard is inaccurate if low-rise structure in a coupled case is utilised under both near and far field earthquakes. The standard is adequate if a tall building is involved but only when a far-field earthquake happens. The research likewise presents results derived by using the ABS and SRSS methods.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.9 no.1 s.41
• /
• pp.61-70
• /
• 2005

Shaking table tests are carried out on a single-degree-of-freedom mass that is equipped with a hybrid base isolation system. The isolator consists of a set of four specially-designed friction pendulum systems (FPS) and a magnetorheological (MR) damper. The structure and its hybrid isolation system are subjected to various intensities of near- and far-fault earthquakes on a large shake table. The proposed fuzzy controller uses feedback from displacement or acceleration transducers attached to the structure to modulate resistance of the semi-active damper to motion. Results from several types of passive and semi-active control strategies are summarized and compared. The study shows that a combination of FPS isolators and an adjustable MR damper can effectively provide robust control of vibration for a large full-scale structure undergoing a wide variety of seismic loads.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.337-346
• /
• 2020

Traffic jam and congestion in urban areas has caused the need to improve the utility of underground space. In response, research on underground structures is increasingly being conducted. Notably, a double-deck tunnel is one of the most widely used of all those underground structures. This double-deck tunnel is separated by the middle slab into the upper and lower roadways. Both vehicle load and earthquake load cause the middle slab to exhibit dynamic behavior. Earthquake-related response characteristics, in particular, are highly complex and difficult to interpret in a theoretical context, and thus experimental research is required. The aim of the present study is to assess the stability of a double-deck tunnel's middle slab of the Collapse Prevention Level and Seismic Category 1 with regard to the presence of vibration-damping Rubber Bearings. In vibration table tests, the ratio of similitude was set to 1/4. Linings and vibrating platforms were fixed during scaled model tests to represent the integrated behavior of the ground and the applied models. In doing so, it was possible to minimize relative behavior. The standard TBM cross-section for the virtual double-deck tunnel was selected as a test subject. The level of ground motion exerted on the bedrock was set to 0.154 g (artificial seismic wave, Collapse Prevention Level and Seismic Category 1). A seismic wave with the maximum acceleration of 0.154 g was applied to the vibration table input (bedrock) to analyze resultant amplification in the models. As a result, the seismic stability of the middle slab was evaluated and analyzed with respect to the presence of vibration-damping rubber bearings. It was confirmed that the presence of vibration-damping rubber bearings improved its earthquake acceleration damping performance by up to 40%.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.23-30
• /
• 2010

Seismic qualification (SQ) is required prior to the installation of safety related electrical cabinets in nuclear power plants (NPPs). Modal identification of the electrical equipment is one of the most significant steps to perform SQ, and is an essential process to construct a realistic analytical model. In this study, shaking table tests were conducted to identify a variation of the dynamic characteristics of a seismic monitoring system cabinet installed in NPPs according to the excitation level. Modal identification of the cabinet has been performed by a frequency domain decomposition method. The results of this study show that the dynamic properties of the cabinet are nonlinearly varied according to the excitation level and the specimen behaves significantly in a nonlinear manner under safe shutdown earthquake motion in Korea. The main sources of the nonlinear behavior of the specimen have been judged by friction forces and geometrical nonlinearity rather than material nonlinearity. The nonlinear variation of the dynamic characteristics of the electrical cabinet might be accepted as an important fact that should be considered during the SQ of safety related equipment.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.85-92
• /
• 2011

The dynamic behavior of piles becomes very complex due to soil-pile dynamic interaction, soil non-linearity, resonance phenomena of soil-pile system and so on. Therefore, the proper numerical simulation of the pile behavior needs much effort and calculation time. In this research, a new modeling method, which can be applied to the conventional finite difference analysis program FLAC 3D, was developed to reduce the calculation time. The soil domain in this method is divided into a near-field region and a far-field region, which is not influenced by the soil-pile dynamic interaction. Then, the ground motion of the far-field is applied to the boundaries of the near-field instead of modeling the far-field region as finite meshes. In addition, the soil non-linearity behavior is modeled by using the hysteretic damping model, which determines the soil tangent modulus as a function of shear strain and the interface element was applied to simulate the separation and slip between the soil and pile. The proposed method reduced the calculation time by as much as one third compared with a usual modeling method and maintained the accuracy of the calculated results. The calculated results by the proposed method showed a good agreement with the prototype pile behavior, which was obtained by applying a similitude law to the 1-g shaking table test results.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2023

In the seismic design of structures, seismic forces are calculated based on structural models and analysis. In order to accurately address the dynamic characteristics of the actual structure in the structural model, calibration based on actual measurements is required. In this study, a 4-story frame test specimen was manufactured to simulate frame building, accelerometers were attached at each floor, and 1-axis shaking table test was performed. The natural period of the specimen was similar to that of the actual 4 story frame building, and the columns were designed to behave with double-curvature having the infinite stiffness of the horizontal members. To investigate the effects seismic waves characteristics, historical and artificial excitations with various frequencies and acceleration magnitudes were applied. The natural frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes were obtained using frequency response functions obtained from dynamic response signals, and the mode vector deviations according to the input seismic waves were verified using the Mode assurance criterion (MAC). In addition, the damping ratios obtained from the vibration tests were applied to the structural model, and the method with refined dynamic characteristics was validated by comparing the analysis results with the experimental data.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.22 no.11
• /
• pp.123-131
• /
• 2006

Liquefaction-induced lateral spreading has been the most extensive damage to pile foundations during earthquakes. Several cases of pile failures were reported despite the fact that a large margin of safety factor was employed in their design. In this study, 1-g shaking table tests were performed in order to analyze the failure behavior of piles embedded in liquefied soil deposits by buckling instability. As a result, it can be concluded that the pile subjected to excessive axial loads $(near\;P_{cr})$ can fail easily by buckling instability during liquefaction. When lateral spreading took place in sloping grounds, it was found that lateral loading due to lateral spreading increased lateral deflection of pile and reduced the buckling load. In addition, from the buckling shape of pile, difference between Euler's buckling and pile buckling vat observed. In the case of pile buckling, hinge formed at the middle point of the pile, not at the bottom. And in sloping grounds, location of hinge formation got lower compared with level ground because of the soil movements.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.25 no.11
• /
• pp.27-38
• /
• 2009

In this study, a series of 1 g shaking table model pile tests were carried out in saturated dense and loose sand to evaluate dynamic p-y curves for various conditions of flexural stiffness of a pile shaft, acceleration frequency and acceleration amplitude for input loads. Dynamic p-y backbone curve which can be applied to pseudo static analysis for saturated dense sand was proposed as a hyperbolic function by connecting the peak points of the experimental p-y curves, which corresponded to maximum soil resistances. In order to represent the backbone curve numerically, empirical equations were developed for the initial stiffness ($k_{ini}$) and the ultimate capacity ($p_u$) of soils as a function of a friction angle and a confining stress. The applicability of a p-y backbone curve was evaluated based on the centrifuge test results of other researchers cited in literature, and this suggested backbone curve was also compared with the currently available p-y curves. And also, the scaling factor ($S_F$) to account for the degradation of soil resistance according to the excess pore pressure was developed from the results of saturated loose sand.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.75-84
• /
• 2010

An in-cabinet response spectrum should be generated to perform the seismic qualification of devices and instruments mounted inside safety-related electrical equipment installed in nuclear power plants. The response spectrum is available by obtaining accurate seismic responses at the device mounting location of the cabinet. The dynamic behavior of most of electrical equipment may not be easily analyzed due to their complex mass and stiffness distributions. Considering these facts, this study proposes a procedure to estimate the seismic responses of a structure by a combination of a test and subsequent analysis. This technique firstly constructs the modal equations of the structure by using the experiment modal parameters obtained from the impact test. Then the seismic responses of the structure may be calculated by a mode superposition method. A simple steel frame structure was fabricated as a specimen for the validation of the proposed method. The seismic responses of the specimen were estimated by using the proposed technique and compared with the measurements obtained from the shaking table tests. The study results show that it is possible to accurately estimate the seismic response of the structure by using the experimental modal parameters obtained from the impact test.