• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제45권6호
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• pp.803-819
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• 2013

This paper addresses two main issues relevant to the structural assessment of buildings subjected to explosions. The first issue regards the robustness evaluation of steel frame structures: a procedure is provided for computing "robustness curves" and it is applied to a 20-storey steel frame building, describing the residual strength of the (blast) damaged structure under different local damage levels. The second issue regards the precise evaluation of blast pressures acting on structural elements using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) techniques. This last aspect is treated with particular reference to gas explosions, focusing on some critical parameters (room congestion, failure of non-structural walls and ignition point location) which influence the development of the explosion. From the analyses, it can be deduced that, at least for the examined cases, the obtained robustness curves provide a suitable tool that can be used for risk management and assessment purposes. Moreover, the variation of relevant CFD analysis outcomes (e.g., pressure) due to the variation of the analysis parameters is found to be significant.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제28권2호
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• pp.209-221
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• 2018

An empirical and efficient method is presented for calculating the dynamic increase factor to amplify the applied loads on the affected bays of a steel frame structure with semi-rigid connections. The nonlinear static alternate path analysis is used to evaluate the dynamic responses. First, the polynomial models of the extended end plate and the top and seat connection are modified, and the proposed polynomial model of the flush end plate connection shows good agreement as compared with experimental results. Next, a beam model with nonlinear spring elements and plastic hinges is utilized to incorporate the combined effect of connection flexibility and material nonlinearity. A new step-by-step analysis procedure is established to obtain quickly the dynamic increase factor based on a combination of the pushdown analysis and nonlinear dynamic analysis. Finally, the modified dynamic increase factor equation, defined as a function of the maximum ratio value of energy demand to energy capacity of an affected beam, is derived by curve fitting data points generated by the different analysis cases with different column removal scenarios and five types of semi-rigid connections.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.11-18
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• 2011

The connection type of steel moment frames in the country is mostly fabricated in factories so that it is fairly ductile due to good quality control. Based on references, the domestic connection satisfies the performance limit for steel intermediate moment frames specified by the AISC. However, the current KBC2009 building code specifies various systems for steel moment frames such as ordinary, intermediate, and special moment frames while the former KBC2005 only did so for a ductile moment frame. This induces the necessity of investigating which system is appropriate in the country when the domestic connection is applied. Therefore, this study was aimed at finding a proper design method by comparing the ductile moment frame in KBC2005 and the intermediate moment frames in KBC2009. The results showed that seismic design parameters for the ductile moment frames can be reasonable for satisfying the performance objective.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• 제23권4호
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• pp.405-415
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• 2011

For the safe seismic design of buildings, it is necessary to predict the plastic deformation demands of the members as well as the story drift ratio. In the present study, a simple method of estimating the beam plastic rotation was developed for special-moment-resisting steel frame structures designed with strong column-weak beam behavior. The proposed method uses elastic analysis rather than nonlinear analysis, which is difficult to use in practice. The beam plastic rotation was directly calculated based on the results of the elastic analysis, addressing the moment redistribution, the column and joint dimensions, the movement of the plastic hinge, the panel zone deformation, the gravity load, and the strain-hardening behavior. In addition, the rocking effect of the braced frame or core wall on the beam plastic rotation was addressed. For verification, the proposed method was applied to a six-story special-moment frame designed with strong column-weak beam behavior. The predicted plastic rotations of the beams were compared with those that were determined via nonlinear analysis. The beam plastic rotations that were predicted using the proposed method correlated well with those that were determined from the nonlinear pushover analysis.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.265-280
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• 2008

An investigation on the combined effect of foundation type, foundation flexibility, axial load and PR (semi-rigid) connections on the natural frequencies of steel frames is presented. These effects were investigated using a suitable modified FE program for cases where the foundation flexibility, foundation connectivity, and semi-rigid connections could be treated as equivalent linear springs. The effect of axial load on the natural frequency of a structure was found to be significant for slender structures subjected to high axial loads. In general, if columns of medium slenderness are designed without consideration of axial load effects, the frequency of the structure will be overestimated. Studies on the 3-story Los Angeles PR SAC frame indicate that the assumption of rigid connections at beam-column and column-base interfaces, as well as the assumption of a rigid foundation, can lead to significant errors if simplified design procedures are used. These errors in an equivalent static analysis are expected to lead to even more serious problems when considering the effect of higher modes under a non-linear dynamic analysis.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제38권4호
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• pp.381-397
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• 2021

Based on the spatial substructure hybrid simulation test (SHST) method, the seismic performance of a high-strength steel composite K-eccentrically braced frame (K-HSS-EBF) structure system is studied. First, on the basis of the existing pseudostatic experiments, a numerical model corresponding to the experimental model was established using OpenSees, which mainly simulated the shear effect of the shear links. A three-story and five-span spatial K-HSS-EBF was taken as the prototype, and SHST was performed with a half-scale SHST model. According to the test results, the validity of the SHST model was verified, and the main seismic performance indexes of the experimental substructure under different seismic waves were studied. The results show that the hybrid simulation results are basically consistent with the numerical simulation results of the global structure. The deformation of each story is mainly concentrated in the web of the shear link owing to shear deformation. The maximum interstory drifts of the model structure during Strength Level Earthquake (SLE) and Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) meet the demands of interstory limitations in the Chinese seismic design code of buildings. In conclusion, the seismic response characteristics of the K-HSS-EBFs are successfully simulated using the spatial SHST, which shows that the K-HSS-EBFs have good seismic performance.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 한국전산구조공학회 2008년도 정기 학술대회
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• pp.145-150
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• 2008

This study proposes an improved AR-model based structural joint integrity monitoring method and a new damage sensitive feature using RMS values of impulse responses. The proposed methods were applied for joint integrity monitoring of a model scale 2-bay and 4-story steel frame structure and it was found that the AR coefficients could be more consistently estimated by adopting the band-pass filter and cross-correlation function to the raw acceleration signals and the joint damages could be successfully monitored by the proposed methods.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.415-426
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• 2017

Traditional experimental verification for nonlinear system identification often faces the problem of experiment model repeatability. In our research, a steel frame experimental model is developed to imitate the behavior of a single story steel frame under horizontal excitation. Two adjustable rotational dampers are used to simulate the plastic hinge effect of the damaged beam-column joint. This model is suggested as a benchmark model for nonlinear dynamics study. Since the nonlinear form provided by the damper is unknown, a Morlet wavelet based method is introduced to identify the mathematical model of this structure under different damping cases. After the model identification, earthquake excitation tests are carried out to verify the generality of the identified model. The results show the extensive applicability and effectiveness of the identification method.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제4권2호
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• pp.147-162
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• 2001

This paper presents an analytical method which takes into account the non-linearity of individual members, and discusses some case study results. It also discusses the relationship between member non-elastic behavior and excitation duration, and the relationship between member fracture and overall structure behavior. It is clearly demonstrated that the frame already shows almost unstable behavior due to long-columnization just before the occurrence of a column fracture. Then, a column fracture immediately induces a structural collapse mechanism.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.29-46
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• 2020

In this paper we deal with stability problems of any complex structure that can be modeled by beam and shell finite elements. We use for illustration the steel plate girders, which are used in bridge construction, and in industrial halls or building construction. Long spans, slender cross sections exposed to heavy loads, are all critical design points engineers must take into account. Knowing the critical load that will cause lateral torsional buckling of the girder, or load that can lead to web buckling, as an important scenario to consider in a design process.Many of such problem, including lateral torsional buckling with influence of lateral supports and their spacing on critical load can be solved by the proposed method. An illustrative study of web buckling also includes effects of position and spacing of transverse and longitudinal web stiffeners, where stiffeners can be modelled optionally using shell or frame elements.