• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.6 no.5
• /
• pp.515-537
• /
• 2014

Current seismic codes (e.g. the NTC08 Italian code and the EC8 European code) adopt a performance-based approach for both the design of new buildings and the assessment of existing ones. Different limit states are considered by verifying structural members as well as non structural elements and facilities which have generally been neglected in practice. The key role of non structural elements on building performance has been shown by recent earthquakes (e.g. L'Aquila 2009) where, due to the extensive damage suffered by infills, partitions and ceilings, a lot of private and public buildings became unusable with consequent significant socio-economic effects. Furthermore, the collapse of infill panels, particularly in the case of out-of-plane failure, represented a serious source of risk to life safety. This paper puts forward an infill model capable of accounting for the effects arising from prior in-plane damage on the out-of-plane capacity of infill panels. It permits an assessment of the seismic performance of existing RC buildings with reference to both structural and non structural elements, as well as of their mutual interaction. The model is applied to a building type with RC framed structure designed only to vertical loads and representative of typical Italian buildings. The influence of infill on building performance and the role of the out-of-plane response on structural response are also discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.78 no.3
• /
• pp.269-280
• /
• 2021

Reinforced concrete (RC) structural walls with L-shaped sections are commonly used in RC buildings. The walls are often expected to sustain biaxial load and Unsymmetrical bending in an earthquake event. However, there currently exists limited experimental evidence regarding their seismic behaviour in these lateral loading directions. This paper makes experimental and numerical investigations to these walls behaviours. Experimental evidences are presented for four L-shaped wall specimens which were tested under simulated seismic load from different lateral directions. The results highlighted some distinct behaviour of L-shaped walls sustaining Unsymmetrical bending relating to their seismic performance. First, due to the Unsymmetrical bending, out-of-plane reaction forces occur for these walls, which contribute to accumulation of the out-of-plane deformations of the wall, especially when out-of-plane stiffness of the section is reduced by horizontal cracks in the cyclic load. Secondly, cracking was found to affect shear centre of the specimens loaded in the Unsymmetrical bending direction. The shear centre of these specimens distinctly differs in the flange in the positive and negative loading direction. Cracking of the flange also causes significant warping in the bottom part of the wall, which eventually lead to out-of-plane buckling failure.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.88-98
• /
• 2011

Masonry structure is a style of building which has been widely applied as residential facilities of low and middle stories, commercial and public facilities etc. But it is possible to destroy by loss of adhesive strength or sliding when lateral forces, such as earthquake, occurs. This study proposes a seismic retrofit method for masonry structure and its seismic performance is demonstrated by shaking table test. Two specimens per each shaking direction were made, having out-of-plane(weak axis) and in-plane(strong axis) direction. External load of 1 ton was also applied for each specimen during the test, to model the behavior of reinforced masonry wall. As a result of shaking table tests, it is shown that the specimen applying the proposed seismic retrofit method showed acceptable behaviors in both of Korea building design criteria(0.14g) and USA seismic criteria suggested by IBC(0.4g). However, it was observed that stiffness of the specimen toward out-of-plane was rapidly decreasing when seismic excitations over 0.14g were loaded. In comparison of relative displacements, maximum relative displacement of specimens which were accelerated toward out-of-plane with 0.4g at once was 29~31% of maximum relative displacement when specimens were gradually accelerated from 0.08g to 0.4g, while the maximum relative displacement of specimens accelerated toward in-plane has similar value in both cases. Therefore, it is concluded that the wall accelerated toward out-of-plane is more affected by hair crack or possible fatigues caused by seismic excitation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.69 no.6
• /
• pp.651-665
• /
• 2019

Past earthquakes have shown that appropriately designed and detailed buildings with shear walls have great performance such a way that a considerable portion of inelastic energy dissipation occurs in these structural elements. A plastic hinge is fundamentally an energy diminishing means which decrease seismic input energy through the inelastic deformation. Plastic hinge development in a RC shear wall in the areas which have plastic behavior depends on the ground motions characteristics as well as shear wall details. One of the most generally used forms of structural walls is flanged RC wall. Because of the flanges, these types of shear walls have large in-plane and out-of-plane stiffness and develop high shear stresses. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the main characteristics of these structural components and provide a more comprehensive expression of plastic hinge length in the application of performance-based seismic design method and promote the development of seismic design codes for shear walls. In this regard, the effects of axial load level, wall height, wall web and flange length, as well as various features of earthquakes, are examined numerically by finite element methods and the outcomes are compared with consistent experimental data. Based on the results, a new expression is developed which can be utilized to determine the length of plastic hinge area in the flanged RC shear walls.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.1 no.3
• /
• pp.307-326
• /
• 2010

This paper is concerned with the optimal seismic design of added viscous dampers in yielding plane frames. The total added damping is minimized for allowable values of local performance indices under the excitation of an ensemble of ground motions in both regular and irregular structures. The local performance indices are taken as the maximal inter-story drift of each story and/or the normalized hysteretic energy dissipated at each of the plastic hinges. Gradients of the constraints with respect to the design variables (damping coefficients) are derived, via optimal control theory, to enable an efficient first order optimization scheme to be used for the solution of the problem. An example of a ten story three bay frame is presented. This example reveals the following 'fully stressed characteristics' of the optimal solution: damping is assigned only to stories for which the local performance index has reached the allowable value. This may enable the application of efficient and practical analysis/redesign type methods for the optimal design of viscous dampers in yielding plane frames.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.173-180
• /
• 2022

Most of the drinking water dams managed by the local governments in Korea are earthfill dams, and these dams have almost no geotechnical property information necessary for seismic performance evaluation. Nevertheless, in the rough planning stage for improving seismic safety for these dams, it is necessary to classify their relative seismic hazard against earthquakes and conduct an additional ground investigation. The zero seismic failure probability curve is a curve suggested in this study in which the probability of failure due to an earthquake becomes '0' regardless of the geotechnical properties of the earthfill dam. By examining the method and procedure for calculating failure probability due to an earthquake suggested in previous researches, the zero seismic failure probability curves for an earthquake in 1,000-year and 2,400-year return periods in Korea were presented in the form of a hyperbola on the plane of the dam height versus freeboard ratio (ratio of freeboard to dam height), respectively. The distribution characteristics of the dam height and the freeboard ratio of 81 Korean earthfill dams were presented. The two proposed zero seismic failure probability curves are shown on the plane of the dam height versus freeboard ratio, and the relative seismic hazard of 81 dams can be classified into three groups using these curves as boundaries. This study presented the method of classifying the relative seismic hazard and the classification result.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.19 no.6
• /
• pp.459-469
• /
• 2020

An external prestressed steel-bar truss unit was developed as a new strengthening technology to enhance the seismic performance of an in-plane masonry wall structure while taking advantage of the benefits of a prestressed system. The presented method consists of six steel bars: two prestressed vertical bars to introduce a prestressing force on the masonry wall, two diagonal bars to resist shear deformation, and two horizontal bars to maintain the configuration. To evaluate the effects of this new technique, four full-scale specimens, including a control specimen, were tested under combined loadings that included constant-gravity axial loads and cyclic lateral loads. The experimental results were analyzed in terms of the shear strength, initial stiffness, dissipated energy, and strain history. The efficiency of the external prestressed steel-bar truss unit was validated. In particular, a retrofitted specimen with an axial load level of 0.024 exhibited a more stable post behavior and higher energy dissipation than a control specimen with an observed complete sliding failure. The four vertical bars of the adjacent retrofitting units created a virtual column, and their strain values did not change until they reached the peak shear strength. The shear capacity of the masonry wall structure with external prestressed steel-bar truss units could be predicted using the model suggested by Yang et al.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2001.04a
• /
• pp.304-311
• /
• 2001

Unreinforced masonry is widely used as a structural material in residential constructions and known to have poor seismic performance in the out-of-plane rather than in-plane behavior. In countries of lower seismicity such as Korea, it is necessary to check the possibility of the mode of the out-of-plane failure. Though face loading is a major cause of the failure of masonary walls, Korean Seismic Code does not include provision for face-loaded unreinforced masonry walls. This paper briefly reviews the concept of analysis for unreinforced masonry walls subjected to face-load excitation proposed by Priestley, and its applicatility to Korean case.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.27-44
• /
• 2020

This work presents a comparison of three performance-based seismic design methods (PBSD) as applied to plane steel frames having eccentric braces (EBFs) and buckling restrained braces (BRBFs). The first method uses equivalent modal damping ratios (ξ_k), referring to an equivalent multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) linear system, which retains the mass, the elastic stiffness and responds in the same way as the original non-linear MDOF system. The second method employs modal strength reduction factors (${\bar{q}}_k$) resulting from the corresponding modal damping ratios. Contrary to the behavior factors of code based design methods, both ξ_k and ${\bar{q}}_k$ account for the first few modes of significance and incorporate target deformation metrics like inter-storey drift ratio (IDR) and local ductility as well as structural characteristics like structural natural period, and soil types. Explicit empirical expressions of ξ_k and ${\bar{q}}_k$, recently presented by the present authors elsewhere, are also provided here for reasons of completeness and easy reference. The third method, developed here by the authors, is based on a hybrid force/displacement (HFD) seismic design scheme, since it combines the force-base design (FBD) method with the displacement-based design (DBD) method. According to this method, seismic design is accomplished by using a behavior factor (q_h), empirically expressed in terms of the global ductility of the frame, which takes into account both non-structural and structural deformation metrics. These expressions for q_h are obtained through extensive parametric studies involving non-linear dynamic analysis (NLDA) of 98 frames, subjected to 100 far-fault ground motions that correspond to four soil types of Eurocode 8. Furthermore, these factors can be used in conjunction with an elastic acceleration design spectrum for seismic design purposes. Finally, a comparison among the above three seismic design methods and the Eurocode 8 method is conducted with the aid of non-linear dynamic analyses via representative numerical examples, involving plane steel EBFs and BRBFs.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.10 no.5 s.51
• /
• pp.73-83
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study is to investigate the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete pier walls under cyclic out-of-plane loading and to develop improved seismic design criteria. The accuracy and objectivity of the assessment process can be enhanced by using a sophisticated nonlinear finite element analysis program. A computer program, named RCAHEST (Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology), for the analysis of reinforced concrete structures was used. A 4-node flat shell element with drilling rotational stiffness is used for spatial discretization. The layered approach is used to discretize the behavior of concrete and reinforcement through the thickness. Material nonlinearity is taken into account by comprising tensile, compressive and shear models of cracked concrete and a model of reinforcing steel. The method is verified a useful tool to assess the seismic performance of reinforced concrete pier walls subjected to cyclic out-of-plane load through comparing with reliable experimental results.