• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.421-443
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• 2016

When conducting seismic assessment of an asymmetric building, it is essential to carry out three-dimensional analysis considering all the possible directions of seismic input. For this purpose, the author proposed a simplified procedure is to predict the largest peak seismic response of an asymmetric building subjected to horizontal bidirectional ground motion acting in an arbitrary angle of incidence in previous study. This simplified procedure has been applied to torsionally stiff (TS) asymmetric buildings with regular elevation. However, the suitability of this procedure to estimate the peak response of an asymmetric building with vertical irregularity, such as an asymmetric building with setback, has not been assessed. In this article, the pushover-based simplified procedure is applied to estimate the peak response of asymmetric buildings with bidirectional setback. Nonlinear dynamic (time-history) analysis of two six-storey asymmetric buildings with bidirectional setback and designed according to strong-column weak beam concept is carried out considering various directions of seismic input, and the results compared with those estimated by the proposed method. The largest peak displacement estimated by the simplified method agrees well with the envelope of the dynamic analysis response. The suitability assessment of the simplified procedure to analysed building models is made as well based on pushover analysis results.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.377-386
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• 2017

Earthquake-induced pounding damages to building structures were repeatedly observed in many previous major earthquakes. Extensive researches have been carried out in this field. Previous studies mainly focused on the regular shaped buildings and each building was normally simplified as a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system or a multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) system by assuming the masses of the building lumped at the floor levels. The researches on the pounding responses between irregular asymmetric buildings are rare. For the asymmetric buildings subjected to earthquake loading, torsional vibration modes of the structures are excited, which in turn may significantly change the structural responses. Moreover, contact element was normally used to consider the pounding phenomenon in previous studies, which may result in inaccurate estimations of the structural responses since this method is based on the point-to-point pounding assumption with the predetermined pounding locations. In reality, poundings may take place between any locations. In other words, the pounding locations cannot be predefined. To more realistically consider the arbitrary poundings between asymmetric structures, detailed three-dimensional (3D) finite element models (FEM) and arbitrary pounding algorithm are necessary. This paper carries out numerical simulations on the pounding responses between a symmetric rectangular-shaped building and an asymmetric L-shaped building by using the explicit finite element code LS-DYNA. The detailed 3D FEMs are developed and arbitrary 3D pounding locations between these two buildings under bi-directional earthquake ground motions are investigated. Special attention is paid to the relative locations of two adjacent buildings. The influences of the left-and-right, fore-and-aft relative locations and separation gap between the two buildings on the pounding responses are systematically investigated.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.214-224
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• 2007

A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with the renormalization group (RNG) $k-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model is used to examine the effects of difference in building height on flow and pollutant dispersion in asymmetric street canyons. Three numerical experiments with different street canyons formed by two isolated buildings are performed. In the experiment with equal building height, a portal vortex is formed in the street canyon and a typical recirculation zone is formed behind the downwind building. In the experiment with the downwind building being higher than the upwind building, the ambient flow comes into the street canyon at the front of the downwind building and incoming flow diverges strongly in the street canyon. Hence, pollutants released therein are strongly dispersed through the lateral sides of the street canyon. In the experiment with the upwind building being higher than the downwind building, a large recirculation zone is formed behind the upwind building, which is disturbed by the downwind building. Pollutants are weakly dispersed from the street canyon and the residue concentration ratio is largest among the three experiments. This study shows that the difference in upwind and downwind building height significantly influences flow and pollutant dispersion in and around the street canyon.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.473-494
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• 2014

Progressive collapse, which is referred to as the collapse of the entire building under local damages, is a common failure mode happened by earthquakes. The collapse process highly depends on the whole structural system. Since, asymmetry of the building plan leads to the local damage concentration; it may intensify the progressive collapse mechanism of asymmetric buildings. In this research the progressive collapse of regular and irregular 6-story RC ordinary moment resisting frame buildings are studied in the presence of the earthquake loads. Collapse process and collapse propagation are investigated using nonlinear time history analyses (NLTHA) in buildings with 5%, 15% and 25% mass asymmetry with respect to the number of collapsed hinges and story drifts criteria. Results show that increasing the value of mass eccentricity makes the asymmetric buildings become unstable earlier and in the early stages with lower number of the collapsed hinges. So, with increasing the mass eccentricity in building, instability and collapse of the entire building occurs earlier, with lower potential of the progressive collapse. It is also demonstrated that with increasing the mass asymmetry the decreasing trend of the number of collapsed beam and column hinges is approximately similar to the decreasing trend in the average story drifts of the mass centers and stiff edges. So, as an alternative to a much difficult-to-calculate local response parameter of the number of collapsed hinges, the story drift, as a global response parameter, measures the potential of progressive collapse more easily.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.31-37
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• 2010

Asymmetric Slimfloor Beam (ASB) is a composite beam developed in Europe whose asymmetric H beam is partially inserted in concrete slab. Recently in Korea, Asymmetric Slimfloor Beam has been studied in order to save the story height of a building, reduce the amount of construction materials and increase the fire resistance of a building. On this study, the fire resistance of Asymmetric Slimfloor Beam was checked by a fire test and moment capacity was calculated at fire resistance time by a heat-transfer analysis. Using the analysis result, 3-hour fire resistance constructions consisted of fireproof gypsum boards and ASB were selected and fire resistances of selected constructions were checked.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.37-44
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• 1997

In this paper, the inelastic behavior of an asymmetric tall building is investigated. The asymmetry in rigidity caused by the structural asymmetry induces torsional as well as lateral deformation. The inelastic analysis of such an asymmetric structure is difficult to carry out with a planar model and thus requires a full three dimensional model. In this paper a 102 story unsymmetric tall building is analized by static push-over procedure and its behavior is investigated. The analysis are performed with and without floor rotation to compare the results. According to the results the static behavior of the model building, as expected, turned out to be dependent heavily an the asymmetry of the plan shapes of the building.

• 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.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.459-477
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• 2007

A bi-directional tuned mass damper (BTMD) in which a mass connected by two translational springs and two viscous dampers in two orthogonal directions has been introduced to control coupled lateral and torsional vibrations of asymmetric building. An efficient control strategy has been presented in this context to control displacements as well as acceleration responses of asymmetric buildings having asymmetry in both plan and elevation. The building is idealized as a simplified 3D model with two translational and a rotational degrees of freedom for each floor. The principles of rigid body transformation have been incorporated to account for eccentricity between center of mass and center of rigidity. The effective and robust design of BTMD for controlling the vibrations in structures has been presented. The redundancy of optimum design has been checked. Non dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA) has been used for tuning optimum stages and locations of BTMDs and its parameters for control of vibration of seismically excited buildings. The optimal locations have been observed to be reasonably compact and practically implementable.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.61-84
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• 2010

Presented in this paper is the behaviour of asymmetric building isolated by the double variable frequency pendulum isolator (DVFPI). The DVFPI is an adoption of single variable frequency pendulum isolator (VFPI). The geometry and coefficient of friction of top and bottom sliding surfaces can be unequal. The governing equations of motion of the building-isolation system are derived and solved in incremental form. The analysis duly considers the interaction of frictional forces in the two principal directions developed at each sliding surface of the DVFPI. In order to investigate the behaviour of the base isolation using the DVFPI, the coupled lateral-torsional response is obtained under different parametric variations for a set of six far-fault earthquake ground motions and criterion to optimize its performance is proposed. Further, influences of the initial time period, coefficient of friction and frequency variation factors at the two sliding surfaces are investigated. The numerical results of the extensive parametric study help in understanding the torsional behaviour of the structure isolated with the double sliding surfaces as in the DVFPI. It is found that the performance of the DVFPI can be optimized by designing the top sliding surface initially softer and smoother relative to the bottom one.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2011

Ambient vibration tests were carried out to evaluate the dynamic properties of an asymmetric steel building with semi-rigid connections. The test case has many non-structural elements, constructed in the city of Tehran (Iran). The tests were conducted to obtain natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping ratio of the structure and then Fourier transform were used to analyze the velocity records obtained from the tests. The first and second natural periods of the building were obtained as 1.37 s and 1.28 s through the test and damping ratio for the first mode was calculated as 0.047. However, Natural periods obtained from finite element model have higher values from those gained from ambient vibration. Then the model was calibrated by modeling of the in-fill masonry panels at their exact locations and considering the boundary conditions by modeling two blocks near the block No. 3, but the differences were existed. These differences may be due to some hidden stiffness of nonstructural elements in the low range of elastic behavior, showing the structure stiffer than it is in reality.