• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.71-87
• /
• 2014

Interaction between closely-spaced buildings subject to earthquake induced strong ground motions, termed in the literature as "seismic pounding", occurs commonly during major seismic events in contemporary congested urban environments. Seismic pounding is not taken into account by current codes of practice and is rarely considered in practice at the design stage of new buildings constructed "in contact" with existing ones. Thus far, limited research work has been devoted to quantify the influence of slab-to-slab pounding on the inelastic seismic demands at critical locations of structural members in adjacent structures that are not aligned in series. In this respect, this paper considers a typical case study of a "new" reinforced concrete (R/C) EC8-compliant, torsionally sensitive, 7-story corner building constructed within a block, in bi-lateral contact with two existing R/C 5-story structures with same height floors. A non-linear local plasticity numerical model is developed and a series of non-linear time-history analyses is undertaken considering the corner building "in isolation" from the existing ones (no-pounding case), and in combination with the existing ones (pounding case). Numerical results are reported in terms of averages of ratios of peak inelastic rotation demands at all structural elements (beams, columns, shear walls) at each storey. It is shown that seismic pounding reduces on average the inelastic demands of the structural members at the lower floors of the 7-story building. However, the discrepancy in structural response of the entire block due to torsion-induced, bi-directionally seismic pounding is substantial as a result of the complex nonlinear dynamics of the coupled building block system.

• 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.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.83 no.5
• /
• pp.627-644
• /
• 2022

In past major earthquakes (1994 Northridge, 1995 Kobe, Chi-Chi 1999, Kocaeli 1999), significant damages occurred in the liquid storage tanks. The basic failure patterns were observed to be the buckling of the tank wall and uplift of the anchorage system. The damages in the industrial facilities and nuclear power plants have caused the spread of toxic substances to the environment and significant fires. Seismic isolation can be used in liquid storage tanks to decouple the structure and decrease the structural demand in the superstructure in case of ground shaking. Previous studies on the use of seismic isolation systems on liquid storage tanks show that an isolation system reduces the impulsive response but might slightly increase the convective one. There is still a lack of understanding of the seismic response of seismically isolated liquid storage tanks considering the fluid-structure interaction. In this study, one broad tank, one medium tank, and one slender tank are selected and designed. Two- and three-dimensional elastomeric bearings are used as seismic isolation systems. The seismic performance of the tanks is then investigated through nonlinear dynamic time-history analyses. The effectiveness of each seismic isolation system on tanks' performance was investigated. Isolator tension forces, modal analysis results, hydrodynamic stresses, strains, sloshing heights and base shear forces of the tanks are compared. The results show that the total base shear is lower in 3D-isolators compared to 2D-isolators. Even though the tank wall stresses, and strains are slightly higher in 3D-isolators, they are more efficient to prevent the tension problem.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 1991.10a
• /
• pp.90-95
• /
• 1991

The Uniform Building Code (UBC) is the most widely used requirements for earthquake resistant design in the United States. In this paper, a mid-rise steel building is analyzed by applying 12 sets of actual strong-motion earthquake data that have been scaled to acne 2B levels. The simply extrapolated ground motion displacements are used for the dynamic loads. The results of dynamic analyses for a 10-story steel building are compared with the static and dynamic analysis requirements of UBC-88. It was found that computed lateral fortes using UBC-88 static procedure differed by about 60 percent depending on whether the natural period was computed using the UBC empirical method or the UBC recommended Rayleigh's method. The lateral fortes computed from the UBC response spectra were more than 10 times greater than those computed by UBC static procedures. The lateral forces obtained from both linear and nonlinear analyses using 1989 Loma Prieta ground mot ions compared very well with UBC response spectra results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.61 no.2
• /
• pp.183-192
• /
• 2017

Seismic pounding between adjacent buildings with inadequate separation and different dynamic characteristics can cause severe damage to the colliding buildings. Efficient estimation of the maximum pounding force is required to control the extent of damage in adjacent structures or develop an appropriate mitigation method. In this paper, an analytical approach on the basis of statistical relations is presented for approximate computation of extreme value of pounding force between two adjacent structures with equal or unequal heights subjected to stationary and non-stationary excitations. The nonlinearity of adjacent structures is considered using Bouc-Wen model of hysteresis and the pounding effect is simulated by applying the nonlinear viscoelastic model. It is shown that the proposed approach can significantly save computational costs by obviating the need for performing dynamic analysis. To assess the reliability and accuracy of the proposed approach, the results are compared with those obtained from nonlinear dynamic analysis.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.373-385
• /
• 2019

In this article, different frequently adopted modeling aspects of linear and nonlinear dynamic soil-structure interaction (SSI) are studied on a pile-supported integral abutment bridge structure using the open-source platform OpenSees (McKenna et al. 2000, Mazzoni et al. 2007, McKenna and Fenves 2008) for a 2D domain. Analyzed approaches are as follows: (i) free field input at the base of fixed base bridge; (ii) SSI input at the base of fixed base bridge; (iii) SSI model with two dimensional quadrilateral soil elements interacting with bridge and incident input motion propagating upwards at model bottom boundary (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response); (iv) simplified SSI model by idealizing the interaction between structural and soil elements through nonlinear springs (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response). Salient conclusions of this paper include: (i) free-field motions may differ significantly from those computed at the base of the bridge foundations, thus put a significant bias on the inertial component of SSI; (ii) conventional modeling of SSI through series of soil springs and dashpot system seems to stay on the safer side under dynamic conditions when one considers the seismic actions on the structure by considering a fully coupled SSI model; (iii) consideration of abutment-backfill in the SSI model positively affects the general response of the bridge, as a result of large passive resistance that may develop behind the abutments.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.151-164
• /
• 2017

This article aims to investigate the possible retrofitting of a deficient building with soft story failure mode by connecting it to an adjacent building which is designed based on current code with friction dampers at all floors. Low cost and high performance reliability along with significant energy dissipation pertaining to stable hysteretic loops may be considered in order to choose the proper damper for connecting adjacent buildings. After connecting two neighbouring floors by friction dampers, the sliding forces of dampers at various stories are set in two arrangements: uniform sliding force and then variable sliding force. In order to account for the stochastic nature of the seismic events, incremental dynamic analyses are employed prior and after the installation of the friction dampers at the various floors. Based on these results, fragility curves and mean annual rate of exceedance of serviceability and ultimate limit states are obtained. The results of this study show that the collapse mode of the deficient building can affect the optimum arrangement of sliding forces of friction dampers at Collapse Prevention (CP) performance level. In particular, the Immediate Occupancy (IO) performance level is not tangible to the sliding force arrangement and it depends solely on sliding force value. Generally it can be claimed that this rehabilitation scheme can turn the challenge of pounding two adjacent buildings into the opportunity of dissipating a large amount of the seismic input energy by the friction dampers, thus improving significantly the poor seismic performance of the deficient structure.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.289-294
• /
• 2011

In this study, the seismic analysis of traveling sea water screen for nuclear power plant was performed using finite element model. For qualification of traveling sea water screen, the response spectrum analysis was performed using the given operating basis earthquake(OBE) and safe shutdown earthquake(SSE) floor response spectrum. Dynamic analysis of water sea traveling screen was performed using finite element method. The analytical maximum displacements of traveling sea water screen were 2.5 mm under OBE condition and 4.6 mm under SSE condition. The maximum stresses of traveling sea water screen were 24 MPa under OBE condition and 44 MPa under SSE condition, that this results were 18 %, 27% of yield strength of material. Thus, it can shown that the structural integrity of traveling sea water screen has a stable structure for seismic load conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.38 no.10
• /
• pp.1157-1162
• /
• 2014

Two acceleration methods, an effective force method (or inertia method) and a large mass method, have been applied for performing time history seismic analysis. The acceleration methods for uncracked structures have been verified via previous studies. However, no study has identified the validity of these acceleration methods for cracked piping. In this study, the validity of the acceleration methods for through-wall cracked piping is assessed via time history implicit dynamic elastic seismic analysis from the viewpoint of linear elastic fracture mechanics. As a result, it is identified that both acceleration methods show the same results for cracked piping if a large mass magnitude and maximum time increment are adequately selected.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.24 no.5
• /
• pp.445-452
• /
• 2019

In this paper, dynamic stress, strain and deflection analysis of concrete pipes conveying nanoparticles-water under the seismic load are studied. The pipe is buried in the soil which is modeled by spring and damper elements. The Navier-Stokes equation is used for obtaining the force induced by the fluid and the mixture rule is utilized for considering the effect of nanoparticles. Based on refined two variables shear deformation theory of shells, the pipe is simulated and the equations of motion are derived based on energy method. The Galerkin and Newmark methods are utilized for calculating the dynamic stress, strain and deflection of the concrete pipe. The influences of internal fluid, nanoparticles volume percent, soil medium and damping of it as well as length to diameter ratio of the pipe are shown on the dynamic stress, strain and displacement of the pipe. The results show that with enhancing the nanoparticles volume percent, the dynamic stress, strain and deflection decrease.