• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.463-484
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• 2015

Modern codes for earthquake resistant building design require consideration of the so-called accidental design eccentricity, to account for torsional response caused by several factors not explicitly considered in design. This provision requires that the mass centres in the building floor be moved a certain percentage of the building's dimension (usually 5%) along both the x and y axes and in both positive and negative directions. If one considers also the spatial combinations of the two component motion in a dynamic analysis of the building, the number of required analyses and combinations increases substantially, causing a corresponding work load increase for practicing structural engineers. Another shortcoming of this code provision is that its introduction has been based primarily on elastic results from investigations of oversimplified, hence questionable, one story building models. This problem is addressed in the present paper using four groups of eccentric braced steel buildings, designed in accordance with Eurocodes 3 (steel) and 8 (earthquake design), with and without accidental eccentricities considered. The results indicate that although accidental design eccentricities can lead to somewhat reduced inelastic response demands, the benefit is not significant from a practical point of view. This leads to suggestions that accidental design eccentricities should probably be abolished or perhaps replaced by a simpler and more effective design provision, at least for torsionally stiff buildings that constitute the vast majority of buildings encountered in practice.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2016

The domestic and foreign seismic design codes have specified that time history covers design response spectrum when the response spectrum, which calculated from the time history, is smaller than the design response spectrum at five points or less. In order to verify the design codes, time history analysis for a pier was performed by using five artificial time histories conforming design code with various characteristics and its member forces were evaluated according to them. It was confirmed from analysis results that, regardless of the conformity to design code requirement, seismic design using the artificial time histories could not guarantee earthquake resistant design if the response spectrum from them is lower than design response spectrum at the similar period to the natural frequency of structure. Thus, the time history generating method to make its acceleration response spectrum to be greater than design response spectrum at all period was proposed by two modification function in this study. It was also verified whether time histories from the proposed method satisfy the seismic design codes or not.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2021

International seismic codes stipulate that adjacent buildings should be separated by a specified minimum distance, otherwise the pounding effect should be considered in the design. Recent researches proposed an alternative method (Double Difference Combination Rule) to estimate seismic gap between structures, as this method considers the cross relation of adjacent buildings behavior during earthquakes. Four different criteria were used to calculate the minimum separation distance using this method and results are compared to the international codes for five separation cases. These cases used four case study buildings classified by different heights, lateral load resisting systems and fundamental periods of vibrations to assess the consistency in results for the alternative methods. Non-linear analysis was performed to calculate the inelastic displacements of the four buildings, and the results were used to evaluate the relation between elastic and inelastic displacements due to the ductility of structural elements resisting seismic loads. A verification analysis was conducted to guarantee that the separation distance calculated is sufficient to avoid pounding. Results shows that the use of two out of the four studied methods yields separation distances smaller than that calculated by the code specified equations without under-estimating the minimum separation distance required to avoid pounding.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.541-562
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• 2011

In the design of earthquake resistant reinforced concrete (RC) structures, both flexural strength and deformability need to be considered. However, in almost all existing RC design codes, the design of flexural strength and deformability of RC beams are separated and independent on each other. Therefore, the pros and cons of using high-performance materials on the flexural performance of RC beams are not revealed. From the theoretical results obtained in a previous study on flexural deformability of RC beams, it is seen that the critical design factors such as degree of reinforcement, concrete/steel yield strength and confining pressure would simultaneously affect the flexural strength and deformability. To study the effects of these factors, the previous theoretical results are presented in various charts plotting flexural strength against deformability. Using these charts, a "concurrent flexural strength and deformability design" that would allow structural engineers to consider simultaneously both strength and deformability requirements is developed. For application in real construction practice where concrete strength is usually prescribed, a simpler method of determining the maximum and minimum limits of degree of reinforcement for a particular pair of strength and deformability demand is proposed. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the application of both design methods.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.61 no.5
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• pp.663-674
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• 2017

The determination of the fundamental period of vibration of a structure is essential to earthquake design. Current codes provide formulas for the approximate estimation of the fundamental period of earthquake-resistant building systems. These formulas are dependent only on the height of the structure or number of storeys without taking into account the presence of infill walls into the structure, despite the fact that infill walls increase the stiffness and mass of the structure leading to significant changes in the fundamental period. Furthermore, such a formulation is overly conservative and unable to account for structures with geometric irregularities. In this study, which comprises the companion paper of previous published research by the authors, the effect of the vertical geometric irregularities on the fundamental periods of masonry infilled structures has been investigated, through a large set of infilled frame structure cases. Based on these results, an attempt to quantify the reduction of the fundamental period due to the vertical geometric irregularities has been made through a proposal of properly reduction factor.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.161-170
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• 2010

To reduce the amount of seismic damage, several design codes are being improved considering the earthquake resistant systems, and many researches are being conducted to develop the earthquake damage evaluation techniques. This study develops the Korean seismic fragility function using the modified HAZUS method applicable to PSC-I girder bridges in Korea. The major coefficients are modified considering the difference between the seismic design levels of America and Korea. Seismic fragility function of the PSC-I girder bridge (one of the standard bridge types in Korea) is evaluated using two methods: numerical analysis and modified HAZUS method. The main coefficients are obtained about 70% of the proposed values in HAZUS. It is found that the seismic fragility function obtained using the modified HAZUS method closes to the fragility function obtained by conventional numerical analysis method.