• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.667-673
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• 2010

The near fault ground motion (NFGM) is characterized by a single long period velocity pulse with large magnitude. NFGMs have been observed in recent strong earthquakes, Northridge (1994), Japan Kobe (1995), Turkey Izmit (1999), China Sichuan (2008), Haiti (2010) etc. These strong earthquakes have caused considerable damage to infrastructures because the epicenter was close to the urban area, called as NFGM. Extensive research for the far field ground motion (FFGM) have been carried out in strong seismic region, but limited research have been done for NFGM in low or moderate seismic regions because of very few records. The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyze the seismic response of reinforced concrete bridge piers subjected to near-fault ground motions. The seismic performance of six RC bridge piers depending on three confinement steel ratios and three superstructure mass was investigated on the shaking table. From these experimental results, it was confirmed that the reduction of seismic performance was observed for test specimens with lower confinement steel ratio or more deck weight. The displacement ductility of RC bridge piers in terms of the stiffness degradation is proposed based on test results the shaking table.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2015

The present paper aims at evaluating damage and collapse behavior of low-rise buildings with unidirectional mass irregularities in plan (torsional buildings). In previous earthquake events, such buildings have been exposed to extensive damages and even total collapse in some cases. To investigate the performance and collapse behavior of such buildings from probabilistic points of view, three-dimensional three and six-story reinforced concrete models with unidirectional mass eccentricities ranging from 0% to 30% and designed with modern seismic design code provisions specific to intermediate ductility class were subjected to nonlinear static as well as extensive nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) under a set of far-field real ground motions containing 21 two-component records. Performance of each model was then examined by means of calculating conventional seismic design parameters including the response reduction (R), structural overstrength (${\Omega}$) and structural ductility (${\mu}$) factors, calculation of probability distribution of maximum inter-story drift responses in two orthogonal directions and calculation collapse margin ratio (CMR) as an indicator of performance. Results demonstrate that substantial differences exist between the behavior of regular and irregular buildings in terms of lateral load capacity and collapse margin ratio. Also, results indicate that current seismic design parameters could be non-conservative for buildings with high levels of plan eccentricity and such structures do not meet the target "life safety" performance level based on safety margin against collapse. The adverse effects of plan irregularity on collapse safety of structures are more pronounced as the number of stories increases.