• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.463-472
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• 2022

Reinforced concrete (RC) beam column joints (BCJ) have mostly exhibited poor seismic performance during several past earthquakes, typically due to the poor-quality concrete or lack of reinforcement detailing typical of pre-code design practice. The present study is motivated towards numerical simulation and seismic fragility assessment of one such RC-BCJ. The BCJ is loaded to failure and strengthened using Ultra High Performance-Hybrid Fiber Reinforced Concrete (UHP-HFRC) jacketing. The strengthening is performed for four different BCJ specimens, each representing an intermediate damage state before collapse. viz., slight, moderate, severe, and collapse. From the numerical simulation of all the BCJ specimens, an attempt is made to correlate different modelling and design parameters of the BC joint with respect to the damage states. In addition, seismic fragility analysis of the original as well as the retrofitted damaged BCJ specimens show the relative enhancement achieved in each case.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.495-502
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• 2003

This study proposed the Probability Density Function (PDF) interpolation technique to evaluate the seismic fragility curves as a function of the return period. Seismic fragility curves have been developed as a function of seismic intensities such as peak ground acceleration, peak pound velocity, and pseudo-velocity spectrum. The return period of design earthquakes, however, can be more useful among those seismic intensity measurements, because the seismic hazard curves are generally represented with a return period of design earthquakes and the seismic design codes also require to consider the return period of design earthquake spectrum for a specific site. In this respect the PDF interpolation technique is proposed to evaluate the seismic fragility curves as a function of return period. Seismic fragility curves based on the return period are compared with ones based on the peak ground acceleration for the bridge model.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.89-96
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• 2018

The paper presents the damage estimation of bridge structures in Daegu city based on the scenario-based earthquakes. Since the fragility curves for domestic bridge strucures are limited, the Hazus methodology is employed to derive the fragility curves and estimate the damage. A total of four earthuquake scenarios near Daegu city are assumed and structure damage is investigated for 81 bridge structures. The seismic fragility function and damage level of each bridge had adopted from the analytical method in HAZUS and then, the damage probability using seismic fragility function for each bridge was evaluated. It was concluded that the seismic damage to bridges was higher when the magnitude of the earthquake was large or nearer to the epicenter.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.98-106
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• 2013

Seismic fragility curves for an offshore wind-turbine structure were obtained. The dynamic response of an offshore wind turbine was analyzed by considering the nonlinear behavior of layered soil and the added mass effect due to seawater. A pile-soil interaction effect was considered by using nonlinear p-y, t-z curves. In the analysis, the amplification effect of ground acceleration through layered soil was considered by applying ground motion to each of the soil layers. The vertical variation in ground motion was found by one-dimensional free-field analysis of ground soils. Fragility curves were determined by damage levels in terms of tower stress and nacelle displacements that were found from static pushover analysis of the wind-turbine structure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.105-123
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• 2016

In this paper, using the probabilistic methods, the seismic demand of buckling restrained braced frames subjected to earthquake was evaluated. In this regards, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14-storybuildings with different buckling restrained brace configuration (including diagonal, split X, chevron V and Inverted V bracings) were designed. Because of the inherent uncertainties in the earthquake records, incremental dynamical analysis was used to evaluate seismic performance of the structures. Using the results of incremental dynamical analysis, the "capacity of a structure in terms of first mode spectral acceleration", "fragility curve" and "mean annual frequency of exceeding a limit state" was determined. "Mean annual frequency of exceeding a limit state" has been estimated for immediate occupancy (IO) and collapse prevention (CP) limit states using both Probabilistic Seismic Demand Analysis (PSDA) and solution "based on displacement" in the Demand and Capacity Factor Design (DCFD) form. Based on analysis results, the inverted chevron (${\Lambda}$) buckling restrained braced frame has the largest capacity among the considered buckling restrained braces. Moreover, it has the best performance among the considered buckling restrained braces. Also, from fragility curves, it was observed that the fragility probability has increased with the height.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.175-185
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• 2021

This study strives to highlight the importance of considering the vertical ground motions (VGM) in the seismic evaluation of RC buildings. To this aim, IDA (Incremental Dynamic Analysis) is conducted on three code-based designed high-rise RC frame-core wall buildings using a suite of earthquake records comprising of significant VGMs. To unravel the significance of the VGM inclusion on the performance of the buildings, IDAs are conducted in two states (with and without the vertical component), and subsequently based on each analysis, fragility curves are developed. Non-simulated collapse criteria are used to determine the collapse state drift ratio and the area under the velocity spectrum (SIm) is taken into account as the intensity measure. The outcome of this study delineates that the inclusion of VGM leads to the increase in the collapse vulnerability of the structures as well as to the change in the pattern of inter-story drifts and failure mode of the buildings. The results suggested that it would be more conservative if the VGM is included in the seismic assessment and the fragility analysis of RC buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.97-107
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• 2021

A comprehensive study on seismic performance of wood frame building in hilly regions is presented. Specifically, seismic fragility assessment of a typical wood frame building at various locations of the northeast region of India are demonstrated. A three-dimensional simplified model of the wood frame building is developed with due consideration to nonlinear behaviour of shear walls under lateral loads. In doing so, a trilinear model having improved capability to capture the force-deformation behaviour of shear walls including the strength degradation at higher deformations is proposed. The improved capability of the proposed model to capture the force-deformation behaviour of shear wall is validated by comparing with the existing experimental results. The structural demand values are obtained from nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA) of the three-dimensional wood frame model considering the effect of uncertainty due to record to record variation of ground motions and structural parameters as well. The ground motion bins necessary for NLTHA are prepared based on the identified hazard level from probabilistic seismic hazard analysis of the considered locations. The maximum likelihood estimates of the lognormal fragility parameters are obtained from the observed failure cases and the seismic fragilities corresponding to different locations are estimated accordingly. The results of the numerical study show that the wood frame constructions commonly found in the region are likely to suffer minor cracking or damage in the shear walls under the earthquake occurrence corresponding to the estimated seismic hazard level; however, poses negligible risk against complete collapse of such structures.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2024

Widespread damages from extreme winds have attracted lots of attentions of the resilience assessment of power distribution systems. With many related environmental parameters as well as numerous power infrastructure components, such as poles and wires, the increased challenge of power asset management before, during and after extreme events have to be addressed to prevent possible cascading failures in the power distribution system. Many extreme winds from weather events, such as hurricanes, generate widespread damages in multiple areas such as the economy, social security, and infrastructure management. The livelihoods of residents in the impaired areas are devastated largely due to the paucity of vital utilities, such as electricity. To address the challenge of power grid asset management, power system clustering is needed to partition a complex power system into several stable clusters to prevent the cascading failure from happening. Traditionally, system clustering uses the Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) to derive the clustering result, which is time-consuming and inefficient. Meanwhile, the previous studies considering the weather hazards did not include any detailed weather-related meteorologic parameters which is not appropriate as the heterogeneity of the parameters could largely affect the system performance. Therefore, a fragility-based network hierarchical spectral clustering method is proposed. In the present paper, the fragility curve and surfaces for a power distribution subsystem are obtained first. The fragility of the subsystem under typical failure mechanisms is calculated as a function of wind speed and pole characteristic dimension (diameter or span length). Secondly, the proposed fragility-based hierarchical spectral clustering method (F-HSC) integrates the physics-based fragility analysis into Hierarchical Spectral Clustering (HSC) technique from graph theory to achieve the clustering result for the power distribution system under extreme weather events. From the results of vulnerability analysis, it could be seen that the system performance after clustering is better than before clustering. With the F-HSC method, the impact of the extreme weather events could be considered with topology to cluster different power distribution systems to prevent the system from experiencing power blackouts.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.503-515
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• 2022

This paper presents the development of seismic fragility curves for a precast reinforced concrete bridge instrumented with a structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The bridge is located near an active seismic fault in the Dominican Republic (DR) and provides the only access to several local communities in the aftermath of a potential damaging earthquake; moreover, the sample bridge was designed with outdated building codes and uses structural detailing not adequate for structures in seismic regions. The bridge was instrumented with an SHM system to extract information about its state of structural integrity and estimate its seismic performance. The data obtained from the SHM system is integrated with structural models to develop a set of fragility curves to be used as a quantitative measure of the expected damage; the fragility curves provide an estimate of the probability that the structure will exceed different damage limit states as a function of an earthquake intensity measure. To obtain the fragility curves a digital twin of the bridge is developed combining a computational finite element model and the information extracted from the SHM system. The digital twin is used as a response prediction tool that minimizes modeling uncertainty, significantly improving the predicting capability of the model and the accuracy of the fragility curves. The digital twin was used to perform a nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with selected ground motions that are consistent with the seismic fault and site characteristics. The fragility curves show that for the maximum expected acceleration (with a 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years) the structure has a 62% probability of undergoing extensive damage. This is the first study presenting fragility curves for civil infrastructure in the DR and the proposed methodology can be extended to other structures to support disaster mitigation and post-disaster decision-making strategies.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.795-812
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• 2011

Estimation of damage probability of buildings under a future earthquake is an essential issue to ensure the seismic reliability. Fragility curves are useful tools for showing the probability of structural damage due to earthquakes as a function of ground motion indices. The purpose of this study is to compare the damage probability of R/C buildings with low and high level of strength and ductility through fragility analysis. Two different types of sample buildings have been considered which represent the building types mentioned above. The first one was designed according to TEC-2007 and the latter was designed according to TEC-1975. The pushover curves of sample buildings were obtained via pushover analyses. Using 60 ground motion records, nonlinear time-history analyses of equivalent single degree of freedom systems were performed using bilinear hysteretic model and peak-oriented hysteretic model with stiffness - strength deterioration for each scaled elastic spectral displacement. The damage measure is maximum inter-story drift ratio and each performance level considered in this study has an assumed limit value of damage measure. Discrete damage probabilities were calculated using statistical methods for each considered performance level and elastic spectral displacement. Consequently, continuous fragility curves have been constructed based on the lognormal distribution assumption. Furthermore, the effect of hysteresis model parameters on the damage probability is investigated.