• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.321-341
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• 2013

This paper investigates earthquake response of reinforced concrete regular frames subjected to rebar corrosion. A typical four-story reinforced concrete frame is designed according to Turkish Earthquake Code in order to examine earthquake response. Then different levels of rebar corrosion scenarios are applied to this frame structure. The deteriorated conditions as a result of these scenarios are included loss in cross sectional area of rebar, loss of mechanical properties of rebar, loss in bond strength and variations in damage limits of concrete sections. The frame is evaluated using a nonlinear static analysis in its sound as well as deteriorated conditions. The rebar corrosion effect on the structural response is investigated by comparing the response of the frame in each scenario with respect to the sound condition of the frame. The results shows that the progressive deterioration of the frame over time cause serious reductions on the base shear and top displacement capacity and also structural ductility of the corroded frames. The propagation time, intensity, and extensity of rebar corrosion on the frame are important parameters governing the effect of rebar corrosion on earthquake response of the frame.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.621-631
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• 2024

In designing earthquake-resistant structures, we traditionally select dynamic loads based on the recurrence period of earthquakes, using individual seismic records or aligning them with the design spectrum. However, these records often represent isolated waveforms lacking continuity, underscoring the need for a deeper understanding of natural seismic phenomena. The Earth's crustal movement, both before and after a significant earthquake, can trigger a series of both minor and major seismic events. These minor earthquakes, which often occur in short time before or after the major seismic events, prompt a critical reassessment of their potential impact on structural design. In this study, we conducted a detailed tunnel response analysis to assess the impact of both single mainshock and multiple earthquake scenarios (including foreshock-mainshock and mainshock-aftershock sequences). Utilizing numerical analysis, we explored how multiple earthquakes affect tunnel deformation. Our findings reveal that sequential seismic events, even those of moderate magnitude, can exert considerable stress on tunnel lining, resulting in heightened bending stress and permanent displacement. This research highlights a significant insight: current seismic design methodologies, which predominantly focus on the largest seismic intensity, may fail to account for the cumulative impact of smaller, yet frequent, seismic events like foreshocks and aftershocks. Our results demonstrate that dynamic analyses considering only a single mainshock are likely to underestimate the potential damage (i.e., ovaling deformation, failure lining, permanent displacement etc.) when compared to analyses that incorporate multiple earthquake scenarios.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.271-282
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• 2019

Knowing the response of buildings to earthquakes is very important in order to ensure that a structure is able to withstand a given level of ground shaking. Thus, nonlinear dynamic earthquake engineering analyses are unavoidable and are preferable procedure in the seismic assessment of buildings. In order to estimate seismic performance on the basis of the hazard at the site where the structure is located, the selection of appropriate seismic input is known to be a critical step while performing this kind of analysis. In this paper, seismic analysis is performed for a four-story reinforced concrete ISPRA frame structure which is designed according to Eurocode 8 (EC8). A total of 90 different earthquake scenarios were selected, 30 for each of three target spectrums, EC8 spectrum, Uniform Hazard Spectrum (UHS), and Conditional Mean Spectrum (CMS). The aim of this analysis was to evaluate the average maximum Inter-story Drift Ratio (IDR) for each target spectrum. Time history analysis for every earthquake record was obtained and, as a result, IDR as the main measure of damage were presented in order to compare with defined performance levels of reinforced concrete bare frames.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.79-90
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• 2023

Existing reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings have seismic vulnerabilities because of seismically deficient details. In particular, since cumulative damage caused by successive earthquakes causes serious damage, repair/retrofit rehabilitation studies for successive earthquakes are needed. This study investigates the repair effect of fiber-reinforced polymer jacketing system for the seismically-vulnerable building structures under successive earthquakes. The repair modeling method developed and validated from the previous study was implemented to the building models. Additionally, the main parameters of the FRP jacketing system were selected as the number of FRP layers associated with the confinement effects and the installation location. To define the repair effects of the FRP jacketing system with the main parameters, this study conducted nonlinear time-history analyses for the building structural models with the various repairing scenarios. Based on this investigation, the repair effects of the damaged building structures were significantly affected by the damage levels induced from the mainshocks regardless of the retrofit scenarios.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.541-561
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• 2014

This paper approaches the issue of seismic vulnerability assessment strategies for facade walls of traditional masonry buildings through the development of a methodology and its subsequent application to over 600 building facades from the old building stock of the historic city centre of Coimbra. Using the post-earthquake damage assessment of masonry buildings in L'Aquila, Italy, an analytical function was developed and calibrated to estimate the mean damage grade for masonry facade walls. Having defined the vulnerability function for facade walls, damage scenarios were calculated and subsequently used in the development of an emergency planning tool and in the elaboration of an access route proposal for the case study of the historic city centre of Coimbra. Finally, the methodology was pre-validated through the comparison of a set of results obtained from its application and also resourcing to a widely accepted mechanical method on the description of the out-of-plane behaviour of facade walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.91 no.5
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• pp.443-457
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• 2024

At present, the traditional concrete surface inspection methods based on artificial vision have the problems of high cost and insecurity, while the computer vision methods rely on artificial selection features in the case of sensitive environmental changes and difficult promotion. In order to solve these problems, this paper introduces deep learning technology in the field of computer vision to achieve automatic feature extraction of structural damage, with excellent detection speed and strong generalization ability. The main contents of this study are as follows: (1) A method based on DeepLabV3+ convolutional neural network model is proposed for surface detection of post-earthquake structural damage, including surface damage such as concrete cracks, spaling and exposed steel bars. The key semantic information is extracted by different backbone networks, and the data sets containing various surface damage are trained, tested and evaluated. The intersection ratios of 54.4%, 44.2%, and 89.9% in the test set demonstrate the network's capability to accurately identify different types of structural surface damages in pixel-level segmentation, highlighting its effectiveness in varied testing scenarios. (2) A semantic segmentation model based on DeepLabV3+ convolutional neural network is proposed for the detection and evaluation of post-earthquake structural components. Using a dataset that includes building structural components and their damage degrees for training, testing, and evaluation, semantic segmentation detection accuracies were recorded at 98.5% and 56.9%. To provide a comprehensive assessment that considers both false positives and false negatives, the Mean Intersection over Union (Mean IoU) was employed as the primary evaluation metric. This choice ensures that the network's performance in detecting and evaluating pixel-level damage in post-earthquake structural components is evaluated uniformly across all experiments. By incorporating deep learning technology, this study not only offers an innovative solution for accurately identifying post-earthquake damage in civil engineering structures but also contributes significantly to empirical research in automated detection and evaluation within the field of structural health monitoring.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.65 no.6
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• pp.689-698
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• 2018

This study focuses on a novel procedure for the robustness assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) framed structures under threat-independent damage scenarios. The procedure is derived from coupled dynamic and non-linear static analyses. Two robustness indicators are defined and the method is applied to two RC frame buildings. The first building was designed for gravity load and earthquake resistance in accordance with Eurocode 8. The second was designed according to the tie force (TF) method, one of the design quantitative procedures for enhancing resistance to progressive collapse. In addition, in order to demonstrate the suitability and applicability of the TF method, the structural robustness and resistance to progressive collapse of the two designs is compared.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.679-694
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• 2013

In this paper the application of the Interpolation Damage Detection Method to the numerical model of a suspension bridge instrumented with a network of Micro-Electro-Mechanical System sensors is presented. The method, which, in its present formulation, belongs to Level II damage identification method, can identify the presence and the location of damage from responses recorded on the structure before and after a seismic damaging event. The application of the method does not require knowledge of the modal properties of the structure nor a numerical model of it. Emphasis is placed herein on the influence of recorded signals noise on the reliability of the results given by the Interpolation Damage Detection Method. The response of a suspension bridge to seismic excitation is computed from a numerical model and artificially corrupted with random noise characteristic of two families of Micro-Electro-Mechanical System accelerometers. The reliability of the results is checked for different damage scenarios.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2022

When a building suffers damages under moderate to severe loading condition, its physical properties such as damping and stiffness parameters will change. There are different practical methods besides various numerical procedures that have successfully detected a range of these changes. Almost all the previous proposed methods used to work with translational components of mode shapes, probably because extracting these components is more common in vibrational tests. This study set out to investigate the influence of using both rotational and translational components of mode shapes, in detecting damages in 3-D steel structures elements. Three different sets of measured components of mode shapes are examined: translational, rotational, and also rotational/translational components in all joints. In order to validate our assumptions two different steel frames with three damage scenarios are considered. An iterative model updating program is developed in the MATLAB software that uses the OpenSees as its finite element analysis engine. Extensive analysis shows that employing rotational components results in more precise prediction of damage location and its intensity. Since measuring rotational components of mode shapes still is not very convenient, modal dynamic expansion technique is applied to generate rotational components from measured translational ones. The findings indicated that the developed model updating program is really efficient in damage detection even with generated data and considering noise effects. Moreover, methods which use rotational components of mode shapes can predict damage's location and its intensity more precisely than the ones which only work with translational data.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.4
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• pp.515-529
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• 2018

Multiple hazards (multihazard) conditions may cause significant risk to structures that are originally designed for individual hazard scenarios. Such a multihazard condition arises when an earthquake strikes to a bridge pre-exposed to scour at foundations due to flood events. This study estimates the impact spectrum of flood-induced scour on seismic vulnerability of bridges. Characteristic river-crossing highway bridges are formed based on the information obtained from bridge inventories. These bridges are analyzed under earthquake-only and the abovementioned multihazard conditions, and bridge fragility curves are developed at component and system levels. Research outcome shows that bridges having pile shafts as foundation elements are protected from any additional seismic vulnerability due to the presence of scour. However, occurrence of floods can increase seismic fragility of bridges at lower damage states due to the adverse impact of scour on bridge components at superstructure level. These findings facilitate bridge design under the stated multihazard condition.