• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.175-184
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• 2018

In this paper, comparative analysis of the 9.12 Gyeongju and 11.15 Pohang earthquakes was conducted in order to provide probable explanations and reasons for the damage observed in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake from both earthquake and structural engineering perspectives. The damage potentials like Arias intensity, effective peak ground acceleration, etc observed in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake were generally weaker than those of the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake. However, in contrast to the high-frequency dominant nature of the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake records, the spectral power of PHA2 record observed in the soft soil site was highly concentrated around 2Hz. The base shear around 2 Hz frequency was as high as 40% building weight. This frequency band is very close to the fundamental frequency of the piloti-type buildings severely damaged in the northern part of Pohang. Unfortunately, in addition to inherent vertical irregularity, most of the damaged piloti-type buildings had plan irregularity as well and were non-seismic. All these contributed to the fatal damage. Inelastic dynamic analysis indicated that PHA2 record demands system ductility capacity of 3.5 for a structure with a fundamental period of 0.5 sec and yield base shear strength of 10% building weight. The system ductility level of 3.5 seems very difficult to be achievable in non-seismic brittle piloti-type buildings. The soil profile of the PHA2 site was inversely estimated based on deconvolution technique and trial-error procedure with utilizing available records measured at several rock sites during the 11.15 Pohang earthquake. The soil profile estimated was very typical of soil class D, implying significant soil amplification in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake. The 11.15 Pohang earthquake gave us the expensive lesson that near-collapse damage to irregular and brittle buildings is highly possible when soil is soft and epicenter is close, although the earthquake magnitude is just minor to moderate (M 5+).

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.137-148
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• 2019

Korean piloti-type buildings are comprised of pilotis in the first story and shear walls in the upper stories. This vertical irregularity causes excessive lateral plastic deformation on the first story while the upper stories stay elastic. Meanwhile, asymmetric position of structural components such as core walls and columns of RC piloti-type buildings tends to produce torsional irregularities of the structures. Korean Building Code(KBC2016) requires the special seismic load and torsional amplification factor to apply to the piloti-type buildings lower than six-story or 20m if it has vertical and torsional irregularities when the building corresponds to seismic design category C or D. Many Korean low-rised RC buildings fall into the class. Therefore, the special earthquake load and torsional amplification factor are often applied to a building simultaneously. However, it has not been studied enough how much influence each parameter has on buildings with vertical and torsional irregularities at the same time. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of factor special seismic load and torsional amplification on seismic performance of irregular buildings. In this study, a damaged 4^th story piloti-type building by the Pohang earthquake was selected and the earthquake response analysis was carried out with various seismic design methods by the KBC 2016. The effect of the design parameters on seismic performance was analyzed by the dynamic analysis of models with special seismic load and torsional amplification factor based on the selected building. It was concluded that the application of the torsional amplification factor to the reference model to which special seismic design was applied, does not significantly affect the seismic performance.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.513-523
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• 2012

The objective of this research is to examine how the lateral resisting system of selected prototypes are affected by seismic zone effect and shape irregularity on its seismic performance. The lateral resisting systems are divided into the three types, diagrid, braced tube, and outrigger system. The prototype models were assumed to be located in LA, a high-seismicity region, and in Boston, a low-seismicity region. The shape irregularity was classified with rotated angle of plane, $0^{\circ}$, $1^{\circ}$, $2^{\circ}$. This study performed two parts of analyses, Linear Response and Non-Linear Response History(NLRH) analysis. The Linear Response analysis was used to check the displacement at the top and natural period of models. NLRH analysis was conducted to invest base shear and story drift ratio of buildings. As results, the displacement of roof and natural period of three structural systems increase as the building stiffness reduces due to the changes in rotation angle of the plane. Also, the base shear is diminished by the same reason. The result of NLRH, the story drift ratio, that was subject to Maximum Considered Earthquake(MCE) satisfied 0.045, a recommended limit according to Tall Building Initiative(TBI).

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.330-336
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• 2005

Existing Bayesian update method using ultrasonic sensors only for mobile robot map building has a problem of the quality of map being degraded in the wall with irregularity, which is caused by the wide beam distribution. For improving this problem, an infrared sensors aided map building method is presented in this paper. Information of obstacle at each region in ultrasonic sensor beam is acquired using the infrared sensors and the information is used to get the confidence of ultrasonic sensor information via fuzzy inference system and genetic algorithm. Combining the resulting confidence with the result of Bayesian update method, an improve map is constructed. The proposed method showed good results in the simulations and experiments.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.33-40
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• 2019

A seismic isolation system is one of the most effective control devices used for mitigating the structural responses due to earthquake loads. This system is generally used as a type of base isolation system for low- and mid-rise building structures. If the base isolation technique is applied to high-rise buildings, a lot of problems may be induced such as the movement of isolation bearings during severe wind loads, the stability problem of bearings under large compression forces. Therefore, a mid-story isolation system was proposed for seismic protection of high-rise buildings. Residence-commerce complex buildings in Korea have vertical irregularity because shear wall type and frame type structures are vertically connected. This problem can be also solved by the mid-story isolation system. An effective analytical method using super elements and substructures was proposed in this study. This method was used to investigate control performance of mid-story isolation system for residence-commerce complex buildings subjected to seismic loads. Based on numerical analyses, it was shown that the mid-story isolation system can effectively reduce seismic responses of residence-commerce complex tall buildings.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.791-818
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• 2015

RC buildings constitute the prevailing type of construction in earthquake-prone region like Kathmandu Valley. Most of these building constructions were based on conventional methods. In this context, the present paper studied the seismic behaviour of existing RC buildings in Kathmandu Valley. For this, four representative building structures with different design and construction, namely a building: (a) representing the non-engineered construction (RC1 and RC2) and (b) engineered construction (RC3 and RC4) has been selected for analysis. The dynamic properties of the case study building models are analyzed and the corresponding interaction with seismic action is studied by means of non-linear analyses. The structural response measures such as capacity curve, inter-storey drift and the effect of geometric non-linearities are evaluated for the two orthogonal directions. The effect of plan and vertical irregularity on the performance of the structures was studied by comparing the results of two engineered buildings. This was achieved through non-linear dynamic analysis with a synthetic earthquake subjected to X, Y and $45^{\circ}$ loading directions. The nature of the capacity curve represents the strong impact of the P-delta effect, leading to a reduction of the global lateral stiffness and reducing the strength of the structure. The non-engineered structures experience inter-storey drift demands higher than the engineered building models. Moreover, these buildings have very low lateral resistant, lesser the stiffness and limited ductility. Finally, a seismic safety assessment is performed based on the proposed drift limits. Result indicates that most of the existing buildings in Nepal exhibit inadequate seismic performance.

• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-95
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• 2018

Most buildings feature core walls (and shear walls) that are placed eccentrically within the building to fulfil architectural requirements. Contemporary earthquake design standards require three dimensional (3D) dynamic analysis to be undertaken to analyse the imposed seismic actions on this type of buildings. A static method of analysis is always appealing to design practitioners because results from the analysis can always be evaluated independently by manual calculation techniques for quality control purposes. However, the equivalent static analysis method (also known as the lateral load method) which involves application of an equivalent static load at a certain distance from the center of mass of the buildings can generate results that contradict with results from dynamic analysis. In this paper the Generalised Force Method of analysis has been introduced for multi-storey buildings. Algebraic expressions have been derived to provide estimates for the edge displacement ratio taking into account the effects of dynamic torsional actions. The Generalised Force Method which is based on static principles has been shown to be able to make accurate estimates of torsional actions in seismic conditions. The method is illustrated by examples of two multi-storey buildings. Importantly, the black box syndrome of a 3D dynamic analysis of the building can be circumvented.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.305-312
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• 2018

Significant research efforts were undertaken to evaluate seismic performance of vertically irregular buildings on flat ground. However, there is scarcity of study on seismic performance of buildings on hill slopes. The present study attempts to investigate seismic behaviour of reinforced concrete irregular stepback building frames with different configurations on sloping ground. Based on extensive regression study of free vibration results of four hundred seventeen frames with varying ground slope, number of story and span number, a modification is proposed to the code based empirical fundamental time period estimation formula. The modification to the fundamental time period estimation formula is a simplified function of ground slope and a newly introduced equivalent height parameter to reflect the effect of stiffness and mass irregularity. The derived empirical formula is successfully validated with various combinations of slope and framing configurations of buildings. The correlation between the predicted and the actual time period obtained from the free vibration analysis results are in good agreement. The various statistical parameters e.g., the root mean square error, coefficient of determination, standard average error generally used for validation of such regression equations also ensure the prediction capability of the proposed empirical relation with reasonable accuracy.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.321-337
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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 reduction in seismic performance 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 strength distributions, have been considered, and a statistical analysis has been performed on the induced reduction in seismic performance. The obtained results have been compared to the standard analysis as provided by Eurocode 8 for existing buildings. The comparison has shown that the Eurocode 8 provisions are not conservative for existing buildings having a large variability in concrete strength.