• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.35 no.3
• /
• pp.149-158
• /
• 2022

As a bridge ages, its mechanical properties and structural performance deteriorate, degrading its seismic performance during a strong earthquake. In this study, the aging of piers and bridge bearings was quantified in several stages and reflected in the analysis model, enabling the evaluation of the member-level seismic fragility of these bearings. Moreover, by assuming that the failure mechanism of a bridge system is a series system, a method for evaluating the system-level seismic fragility based on the member-level seismic fragility analysis result is formulated and proposed. For piers with rubber and lead-rubber bearings (members vulnerable to aging effects), five quantitative degrees of aging (0, 5, 10, 25, and 40%) are assumed to evaluate the member-level seismic fragility. Then, based on the result, the system-level seismic fragility evaluation was implemented. The pier rather than the bridge bearing is observed to have a dominant effect on the system-level seismic fragility. This means that the seismic fragility of more vulnerable structural members has a dominant influence on the seismic fragility of the entire bridge system.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.23-31
• /
• 2011

To investigate the performance of apartment buildings which were built in the 1990s and which have RC bearing wall systems with coupling beams, construction drawings of 13 buildings were collected and analyzed. To evaluate the seismic performance, FEMA 356 and FEMA 440 were selected as guidelines. For the demand curve, the seismic design spectrum in KBC 2009 is used. For each building, the performance points for life safety and the collapse prevention state are calculated. It was found that 9 out of 13 buildings (about 70%) showed damage more severe than the collapse prevention level at the performance point and more damage could be seen at the coupling beams than the walls. However, the story drift limit of FEMA 356 was satisfied for all buildings. Through the analysis of performance points, it was shown that the spectral acceleration has an inverse relationship with the natural period.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.45-57
• /
• 2020

This paper presents the experimental application of a new method for seismic vulnerability assessment of buildings recently introduced in literature, the SMAV (Seismic Model Ambient Vibration) methodology with reference to their operational limit state. The importance of this kind of evaluation arises from the civil protection necessity that some buildings, considered strategic for seismic emergency management, should retain their functionality also after a destructive earthquake. They do not suffer such damage as to compromise the operation within a framework of assessment of the overall capacity of the urban system. To this end, for the characterization of their operational vulnerability, a Structural Operational Index (IOPS) has been considered. In particular, the dynamic environmental vibrations of the two considered strategic buildings, the fire station and the town hall building of a small town in the South of Italy, have been monitored by positioning accelerometers in well-defined points. These measurements were processed through modern Operational Modal Analysis techniques (OMA) in order to identify natural frequencies and modal shapes. Once these parameters have been determined, the structural operational efficiency index of the buildings has been determined evaluating the seismic vulnerability of the strategic structures analyzed. his study aimed to develop a model to accurately predict the acceleration of structural systems during an earthquake.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.11-22
• /
• 2010

An analysis method is proposed for the transient linear or nonlinear analysis of dynamic interactions between a flexible dam body and reservoir impounding compressible water under earthquake loadings. The coupled dam-reservoir system consists of three substructures: (1) a dam body with linear or nonlinear behavior; (2) a semi-infinite fluid region with constant depth; and (3) an irregular fluid region between the dam body and far field. The dam body is modeled with linear and/or nonlinear finite elements. The far field is formulated as a displacement-based transmitting boundary in the frequency domain that can radiate energy into infinity. Then the transmitting boundary is transformed for the direct coupling in the time domain. The near field region is modeled as a compressible fluid contained between two substructures. The developed method is verified and applied to various earthquake response analyses of dam-reservoir systems. Also, the method is applied to a nonlinear analysis of a concrete gravity dam. The results show the location and severity of damage demonstrating the applicability to the seismic evaluation of existing and new dams.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.89-98
• /
• 2018

Fire accidents in foreign countries, like the accident in a thermal power plant in Beijing, the accidents in domestic power plants, including Boryeong Power Plant in 2012 and Taean Power Plant in 2016, a disaster in a nuclear power plant in Fukushima in 2011 or the large-scale power failure in California in 2001 are safety accidents related to electric power, which caused losses in the people's stable lives and the countries. Electricity has an absolute impact on the people's life and the economy, so we can easily expect the serious situation affecting economic growth as well as direct damage to the protection of the people's lives and the losses of properties, if there are fire or explosion accidents or radioactive leak because of negligence in safety management, or problems because of natural disasters like an earthquake in power plants that generate electricity. In this study, it was drawn the improvement of the organizations exclusively in charge of firefighting, the operation of a program for the improvement of professional competency, the development of a customized firefighting management system for plants for systematic firefighting safety management and the improvement of the earthquake-proof correspondence system, which has recently become an issue, as measures for improvements through a survey of the actual conditions concerning the necessity of the construction of a firefighting safety management system for power plants with five power generation companies, including Korea Southern Power Co., Ltd., and the persons in charge of firefighting safety Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.24-33
• /
• 2017

Domestic urban railway underground station structures, which were built in the 1970s ad 1980s, had been constructed as Cut-and-Cover construction system without seismic design. Because the trends of earthquake occurrence is constantly increasing all over the world as well as the Korean Peninsula, massive human casualties and severe properties and structures damage might be occurred in an non-retrofitted underground station during an earthquake above a certain scale. Therefore, to evaluate the retrofit effect and soil-structure interaction of seismic retrofitted underground station, a centrifugal shaking table test with enhanced stiffness on its structural main member are carried out on 1/60 scaled model using the Kobe and Northridge earthquakes. The seismic retrofitted members, which are columns, side walls, and slabs, are evaluated to comparing with existing non-retrofitted centrifuge test results Also, to simulate the scaled ground using variation of shear velocity according to site conditions such as ground depth and density, resonant column test is performed. From the test results, the relative displacement behavior between ground and structures shows comparatively similar in ground, but is increased on ground surface. The seismic retrofit effects were measured using relative displacements and moment behavior of column and side walls rather than slabs. Additionally, earthquake wave can be used to main design factor due to large structural deformation on Kobe earthquake wave than Norhridge earthquake wave.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.59-70
• /
• 2022

There is a growing interest in evaluating earthquake damage and determining disaster prevention measures due to the magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Pohang, Korea. Since the liquefaction phenomena occurred extensively in the residential area as a result of the earthquake, there was a demand for research on liquefaction phenomenon evaluation and liquefaction disaster prediction. Liquefaction is defined as a phenomenon where the strength of the ground is completely lost due to a sudden increase in excess pore water pressure caused due to large dynamic stress, such as an earthquake, acting on loose sand particles in a short period of time. The liquefaction potential index, which can identify the occurrence of liquefaction and predict the risk of liquefaction in a targeted area, can be used to create a liquefaction hazard map. However, since liquefaction assessment using existing field testing is predicated on a single borehole liquefaction assessment, there has been a representative issue for the whole targeted area. Spatial interpolation and geographic information systems can help to solve this issue to some extent. Therefore, in order to solve the representative problem of geotechnical information, this research uses the kriging method, one of the geostatistical spatial interpolation techniques, and constructs a geotechnical information database for liquefaction and spatial interpolation. Additionally, the liquefaction hazard map was created for each return period using the constructed geotechnical information database. Cross validation was used to confirm the accuracy of this liquefaction hazard map.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.83-91
• /
• 2021

In this study, to improve the connection performance between the existing reinforced concrete (R/C) frame and the strengthening member, we proposed a new H-section steel frame with elastic pad (HSFEP) system for seismic rehabilitation of existing medium-to-low-rise reinforced concrete (R/C) buildings. This HSFEP strengthening system exhibits an excellent connection performance because an elastic pad is installed between the existing structure and reinforcing frame. The method shows a strength design approach implemented via retrofitting, to easily increase the ultimate lateral load capacity of R/C buildings lacking seismic data, which exhibit shear failure mechanism. Two full-size two-story R/C frame specimens were designed based on an existing R/C building in Korea lacking seismic data, and then strengthened using the HSFEP system; thus, one control specimen and one specimen strengthened with the HSFEP system were used. Pseudodynamic tests were conducted to verify the effects of seismic retrofitting, and the earthquake response behavior with use of the proposed method, in terms of the maximum response strength, response displacement, and degree of earthquake damage compared with the control R/C frame. Test results revealed that the proposed HSFEP strengthening method, internally applied to the R/C frame, effectively increased the lateral ultimate strength, resulting in reduced response displacement of R/C structures under large scale earthquake conditions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.195-215
• /
• 2016

Rehabilitation of historical unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is a priority in many parts of the world, since those buildings are a living part of history and a testament of human achievement of the era of their construction. Many of these buildings are still operational; comprising brittle materials with no reinforcements, with spatially distributed mass and stiffness, they are not encompassed by current seismic assessment procedures that have been developed for other structural types. To facilitate the difficult task of selecting a proper rehabilitation strategy - often restricted by international treaties for non-invasiveness and reversibility of the intervention - and given the practical requirements for the buildings' intended reuse, this paper presents a practical procedure for assessment of seismic demands of URM buildings - mainly historical constructions that lack a well-defined diaphragm action. A key ingredient of the method is approximation of the spatial shape of lateral translation, ${\Phi}$, that the building assumes when subjected to a uniform field of lateral acceleration. Using ${\Phi}$ as a 3-D shape function, the dynamic response of the system is evaluated, using the concepts of SDOF approximation of continuous systems. This enables determination of the envelope of the developed deformations and the tendency for deformation and damage localization throughout the examined building for a given design earthquake scenario. Deformation demands are specified in terms of relative drift ratios referring to the in-plane and the out-of-plane seismic response of the building's structural elements. Drift ratio demands are compared with drift capacities associated with predefined performance limits. The accuracy of the introduced procedure is evaluated through (a) comparison of the response profiles with those obtained from detailed time-history dynamic analysis using a suite of ten strong ground motion records, five of which with near-field characteristics, and (b) evaluation of the performance assessment results with observations reported in reconnaissance reports of the field performance of two neoclassical torsionally-sensitive historical buildings, located in Thessaloniki, Greece, which survived a major earthquake in the past.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.37 no.6
• /
• pp.39-50
• /
• 2021

Recently, as the occurrence of earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or higher in Korea increases, many studies and interests in seismic design are increasing. A lot of damage was caused by the Pohang earthquake in 2017, and port facilities such as a breakwater were also damaged. This study analyzed the dynamic behavior of the upright breakwater, an external facility, based on a centrifugal model experiment. A series of centrifugal model test was conducted by three different seismic waves such as Pohang Earthquake Wave, Artificial Wave I, and II. As a result, the dynamic behavior of upright breakwater was analyzed. The review showed that acceleration amplification tends to be suppressed as breakwater foundation ground increases support and stiffness through DCM reinforcement and riprap replacement.