• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.379-399
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• 2015

Existing building structures can easily present material mechanical properties which can largely vary even within a single structure. The current European Technical Code, Eurocode 8, does not provide specific instructions to account for high variability in mechanical properties. As a consequence of the high strength variability, at the occurrence of seismic events, the structure may evidence unexpected phenomena, like torsional effects, with larger experienced deformations and, in turn, with reduced seismic performance. This work is focused on the torsional effects related to the irregular stiffness and strength distribution due to the concrete strength variability. The analysis has been performed on a case-study, i.e., a 3D RC framed 4 storey building. A Normal distribution, compatible to a large available database, has been taken to represent the concrete strength domain. Different plan layouts, representative of realistic stiffness distributions, have been considered, and a statistical analysis has been performed on the induced torsional effects. The obtained results have been compared to the standard analysis as provided by Eurocode 8 for existing buildings, showing that the Eurocode 8 provisions, despite not allowing explicitly for material strength variability, are conservative as regards the estimation of structural demand.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.553-562
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• 2013

Vehicle vibrations arise from engine and road surface excitations. The engine mount system of a passenger car sustains the engine weight and insulates the excitation force from the engine system. The dynamic properties of viscoelastic material used for the vehicle engine mounts have large variation due to environmental factors such as environmental temperature and humidity etc. The present study aims to investigate the variability of dynamic characteristics in rubber engine mounts considering both environmental temperature change and material model errors/uncertainty. The engine mounts for a passenger car were modeled using finite element method. Then, the dynamic stiffness variability of the engine mounts were estimated using Monte Carlo simulation method. In order to estimate the variations in the storage and loss moduli of the viscoelastic materials, the material properties of the synthetic rubber were expressed as a fractional-derivative model. Next, in order to simulate the uncertainty propagation of the dynamic stiffness for the engine mounts due to the storage and loss moduli variations, the Monte Carlo simulation was used. The Monte Carlo simulation results showed large variation of the engine-mount stiffness along frequency axis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.605-618
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• 2014

The effects of variability of the mechanical properties of lead rubber bearings on the response of a seismic isolation system are investigated. Material variability in manufacturing, aging, and operation temperature is assumed, and two variation models of an isolation system are considered. To evaluate the effect of ground motion characteristics on the response, 27 earthquake record sets with different peak A/V ratios were selected, and three components of ground motions were used for a seismic response analysis. The response in an isolation system and a superstructure increases significantly for ground motions with low A/V ratios. The variation in the mechanical properties of isolators results in a significant influence on the shear strains of the isolators and the acceleration response of the superstructure. The variation provisions in the ASCE-4 are reasonable, but more strict variation limits should be given to isolation systems subjected to ground motions having low A/V ratios. For application of seismic isolation systems to safety-related nuclear structures, the variation in the material and mechanical properties of the isolation system should be properly controlled during the manufacturing and aging processes. In addition, special consideration should be given to minimize the accidental torsion caused by the dissimilarity in the stiffness variations of the isolators.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.29-42
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• 1999

The SASW (Spectral-Analysis-of-Surface-Waves) method, which evaluates the stiffness structure of the subsurface and structures nonintrusively and nondestructively, has been successfully used in the civil engineering applications. However, the SASW method assumes that the subsurface or structures consist of horizontal multi-layers, so that the method has some difficulty in continuously evaluating the integrity of a tunnel lining and a pavement system. This difficulty prevents the SASW method from being used to generate a tomographic image of stiffness for the subsurface or structures. Recently, the GPR technique which has the advantage of continuously evaluating integrity of the subsurface and structures has been popular. This advantage of GPR technique initiated the efforts to make the SASW method, which is superior to GPR and other nondestructive testing methods due to its capability of evaluating stiffness and modulus, be able to do continuous evaluation of stiffness structure, and the efforts finally lead to the development of \ulcornerTomographic SASW Technique.\ulcorner Tomographic SASW technique is a variation of the SASW method, and can generate a tomographic image of stiffness structure along the measurement line. The tomographic SASW technique was applied to the investigation of lateral variability of a sand box placed by the raining method for the purpose of verifying its effectiveness. Tomographic SASW measurements on the sand box revealed that the investigated sand box has different shear stiffness along the measurement line, which gave a clue of how to make a better raining device.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.165-175
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• 2017

This paper studies soil properties uncertainty and its implementation in the seismic response evaluation of structures. For this, response sensitivity of two 4- and 12-story RC shear walls to the soil properties uncertainty by considering soil structure interaction (SSI) effects is investigated. Beam on Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) model is used for shallow foundation modeling and the uncertainty of soil properties is expanded to the foundation stiffness and strength parameters variability. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation technique is employed for probabilistic evaluations. By investigating the probabilistic evaluation results it's observed that as the soil and foundation become stiffer, the soil uncertainty is found to be less important in influencing the response variability. On the other hand, the soil uncertainty becomes more important as the foundation-structure system is expected to experience nonlinear behavior to more sever degree. Since full This paper studies soil properties uncertainty and its implementation in the seismic response evaluation of structures. For this, response sensitivity of two 4- and 12-story RC shear walls to the soil properties uncertainty by considering soil structure interaction (SSI) effects is investigated. Beam on Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) model is used for shallow foundation modeling and the uncertainty of soil properties is expanded to the foundation stiffness and strength parameters variability. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation technique is employed for probabilistic evaluations. By investigating the probabilistic evaluation results it's observed that as the soil and foundation become stiffer, the soil uncertainty is found to be less important in influencing the response variability. On the other hand, the soil uncertainty becomes more important as the foundation-structure system is expected to experience nonlinear behavior to more sever degree. Since full probabilistic analysis methods like MC commonly are very time consuming, the feasibility of simple approximate methods' application including First Order Second Moment (FOSM) method and ASCE41 proposed approach for the soil uncertainty considerations is investigated. By comparing the results of the approximate methods with the results obtained from MC, it's observed that the results of both FOSM and ASCE41 methods are in good agreement with the results of MC simulation technique and they show acceptable accuracy in predicting the response variability.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.351-364
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• 2017

In this study effects of various parameters like a number of bays, the stiffness of the structure along with the height of the structure was examined. The fundamental period of vibration T of the building is an important parameter for evaluation of seismic base shear. Empirical equations which are given in the Indian seismic code for the calculation of the fundamental period of a framed structure, primarily as a function of height, and do not consider the effect of number of bays and stiffness of the structure. Building periods predicted by these expressions are widely used in practice, although it has been observed that there is scope for further improvement in these equations since the height alone is inadequate to explain the period variability. The aim of this study is to find the effects of a number of bays in both the directions, the stiffness of the structure and propose a new period equation which incorporates a number of bays, plan area, stiffness along with the height of the structure.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2001.11b
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• pp.671-675
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• 2001

Elastomers, which are engine mounts and body mounting rubbers, are traditionally designed for NVH use in vehicles, and they are designed to isolate specific unwanted frequencies. According to the measurement of the characteristics of engine mounts and body mounting rubbers, dynamic stiffness changes with respect to the driving miles accumulated in engine mounts and initial load in body mounting. This study looks at the variability in same engine mount properties, and the desired dynamic stiffness may increased with driving miles accumulated. And the dynamic stiffness of body mounting rubber changes very stiff above 150Hz.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.63-74
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• 2015

This study investigated the influence of probabilistic variability in stiffness and nonlinearity of soil on response of nuclear power plant (NPP) structure subjected to seismic loads considering the soil-structure interaction (SSI). Both deterministic and probabilistic methods have been employed to evaluate the dynamic responses of the structure. For the deterministic method, $SRP_{min}$ method given in USNRC SRP 3.7.2(2013) (envelope of responses using three shear modulus profiles of lower bound($G_{LB}$), best estimate($G_{BE}$) and upper bound($G_{UB}$)) and $SRP_{max}$ method (envelope of responses by more than three ground profiles within range of $G_{LB}{\leq}G{\leq}G_{UB}$) have been considered. The probabilistic method uses the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) that can capture probabilistic feature of soil stiffness defined by the median and the standard deviation. These analysis results indicated that 1) number of samples shall be larger than 60 to apply the probabilistic approach in SSI analysis and 2) in-structure response spectra using equivalent linear soil profiles considering the nonlinear behavior of soil medium can be larger than those based on low-strain soil profiles.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.521-526
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• 2005

Within wafer non-uniformity(WIWNU) improves as the stiffness of pad decrease. We designed the pad groove to study of pad stiffness on WIWNU in Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) and measured the pad stiffness according to groove width. The groove influences effective pad stiffness although original mechanical properties of pad are unchanged by grooving. Also, it affects the flow of slurry that has an effect on the lubrication regime and polishing results. An Increase of the apparent contact area of pad by groove width results in decrease of effective pad stiffness. WIWNU and profile of removal tate improved as effective pad stiffness decreased. Because grooving the pad reduce its effective stiffness and it makes slurry distribution to be uniform. Futhermore, it ensures that pad conforms to wafer-scale flatness variability. By grooving the top pad, it is possible to reduce its stiffness and hence reduce WIWNU and edge effect.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.129-137
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• 2002

Elastomers, which are used engine mounts and body mount rubbers, are traditionally designed for NVH use in vehicles, and for vibration isolation in specific frequency range. According to the measurement of the characteristics of the SUV's engine mounts, there are variability in same engine mount properties. Static and dynamic stiffness of the SUV's engine mounts are changed due to the driving miles accumulated. The pre-load of body mount rubbers are changed due to the empty vehicle weight, passenger's weight and gross vehicle weight. And the dynamic stiffness of body mount rubbers are changed very hard above 150Hz frequency range.