• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.72 no.3
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• pp.395-408
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• 2019

Engineered structures built in seismic-prone areas are affected by aftershocks in addition to mainshocks. Although aftershocks generally are lower in magnitude than that of the mainshocks, some aftershocks may have higher intensities; thus, structures should be able to withstand the effect of strong aftershocks as well. This seismic scenario arises for far-field mainshock along with near-field aftershocks. In this study, four 2D reinforced concrete (RC) frames with different numbers of stories were designed in accordance with the current Iranian seismic design code. As a way to evaluate the seismic response of the case-study RC frames, the inter-story drift ratio (IDR) demand, the residual inter-story drift ratio (RIDR) demand, the Park-Ang damage index, and the period elongation ratio can be useful engineering demand parameters for evaluating their seismic performance under mainshock-aftershock sequences. The frame models were analyzed under a set of far-field mainshock, near-fault aftershocks seismic sequences using nonlinear dynamic time-history analysis to investigate the relationship among IDR, RIDR, Park-Ang damage index and period ratio experienced by the frames. The results indicate that the growth of IDR, RIDR, Park-Ang damage index, and period ratio in high-rise and short structures under near-fault aftershocks were significant. It is evident that engineers should consider the effects of near-fault aftershocks on damaged frames that experience far-field mainshocks as well.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.707-714
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• 2011

The inter-story drift ratio is used to evaluate the damage of buildings by the earthquake. This is known that as the inter-story drift ratio decreases, the seismic damage decreases. Although to reduce the inter-story drift ratio is the important issue in the seismic design, no practical inter-story drift design method has bean developed. This study presents an optimal inter-story drift design method to improve the seismic performance of the steel moment frames using the resizing algorithm. The objective function of the proposed method is to minimize the differences of the inter-story drift ratios so that the inter-story drift ratios of the building could be distributed evenly and be reduced. Because this method redesigns the sectional properties of structural members base on the displacement participation factor calculated by the unit-load method, this can improve the seismic performance of the structure without the iterative structural analysis. The efficiency of this algorithm was demonstrated by the application to steel moment frames.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.565-585
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• 2009

Superelastic Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are gaining acceptance for use as reinforcing bars in concrete structures. The seismic behaviour of concrete frames reinforced with SMAs is being assessed in this study. Two eight-storey concrete frames, one of which is reinforced with regular steel and the other with SMAs at the plastic hinge regions of beams and regular steel elsewhere, are designed and analyzed using 10 different ground motion records. Both frames are located in the highly seismic region of Western Canada and are designed and detailed according to current seismic design standards. The validation of a finite element (FE) program that was conducted previously at the element level is extended to the structure level in this paper using the results of a shake table test of a three-storey moment resisting steel RC frame. The ten accelerograms that are chosen for analyzing the designed RC frames are scaled based on the spectral ordinate at the fundamental periods of the frames. The behaviour of both frames under scaled seismic excitations is compared in terms of maximum inter-storey drift, top-storey drift, inter-storey residual drift, and residual top-storey drift. The results show that SMA-RC frames are able to recover most of its post-yield deformation, even after a strong earthquake.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.1957-1964
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• 2010

In Video coding, the first frame is encoded in intra mode which generates a larger number of bits. In addition, the first frame is used for the inter mode encoding of the following frames. Thus the intial QP for the first frame of GOP affects the first frame as well as the following frames. Traditionally, the initial QP of a GOP is determined by the initial QP of the previous GOP and the average QP of the inter mode frames. In case of JM, the initial QP of a GOP is adjusted as the initial QP being less than the average QP of inter mode frames by two. However, this method is not suitable for the low bit rate video coding. In this paper, the linear relationship between the optimal QP and the ratio of the PSNR of the first frame and the average PSNR of the inter mode frames is first investigated and the linear model is proposed based on the results of the investigation. The proposed model calculate the optimal initial QP using the encoding results of the previous GOP. It is shown by experimental results that the new algorithm can predict the optimal initial QP more accurately and generate the PSNR performance better than that of the existing JM algorithm.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.91-110
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• 2019

In the present study, the effects of six different ground motion scaling methods on inelastic response of nonlinear steel moment frames (SMFs) are studied. The frames were designed using energy-based PBPD approach with the design concept using pre-selected target drift and yield mechanism as performance limit state. Two target spectrums are considered: maximum credible earthquake spectrum (MCE) and design response spectrum (DRS). In order to investigate the effects of ground motion scaling methods on the response of the structures, totally 3216 nonlinear models including three frames with 4, 8 and 16 stories are designed using PBPD approach and then they are subjected to ensembles of ground motions including 42 far-fault and 90 near-fault pulse-type records which were scaled using the six different scaling methods in accordance to the two aforementioned target spectrums. The distributions of maximum inter-story drift over the height of the structures are computed and compared. Finally, the efficiency and reliability of each ground motion scaling method to estimate the maximum nonlinear inter-story drift of special steel moment frames designed by energy-based PBPD approach are statistically investigated, and the most suitable scaling methods with the lowest dispersion for two groups of earthquake ground motions are introduced.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.3
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• pp.421-433
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• 2020

Masonry infills are normally considered as non-structural elements in design practice, therefore, the interaction between the bounding frame and the strength contribution of masonry infills is commonly ignored in the seismic analysis work of the RC frames. However, a number of typical RC frames with irregular distributed masonry infills have suffered from undesirable weak-story failure in major earthquakes, which indicates that ignoring the influence of masonry infills may cause great seismic collapse risk of RC frames. This paper presented the investigation on the risk of seismic collapse of RC frames with irregularly distributed masonry infills through a large number of nonlinear time history analyses (NTHAs). Based on the results of NTHAs, seismic fragility curves were developed for RC frames with various distribution patterns of masonry infills. It was found that the existence of masonry infills generally reduces the collapse risk of the RC frames under both frequent happened and very strong earthquakes, however, the severe irregular distribution of masonry infills, such as open ground story scenario, results in great risk of forming a weak story failure. The strong-column weak-beam (SCWB) ratio has been widely adopted in major seismic design codes to control the potential of weak story failures, where a SCWB ratio value about 1.2 is generally accepted as the lower limit. In this study, the effect of SCWB ratio on inter-story drift distribution was also parametrically investigated. It showed that improving the SCWB ratio of the RC frames with irregularly distributed masonry infills can reduce inter-story drift concentration index under earthquakes, therefore, prevent weak story failures. To achieve the same drift concentration index limit of the bare RC frame with SCWB ratio of about 1.2, which is specified in ACI318-14, the SCWB ratio of masonry-infilled RC frames should be no less than 1.5. For the open ground story scenario, this value can be as high as 1.8.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.1155-1171
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• 2016

Post-tensioned (PT) steel moment resisting frames (MRFs) with semi-rigid connections (SRC) can be used to control the hysteretic energy demands and to reduce the maximum inter-story drift (${\gamma}$). In this study the seismic behavior of steel MRFs with PT connections is estimated by incremental nonlinear dynamic analysis in terms of dissipated hysteretic energy ($E_H$) demands. For this aim, five PT steel MRFs are subjected to 30 long duration earthquake ground motions recorded on soft soil sites. To assess the energy dissipated in the frames with PT connections, a new expression is proposed for the hysteretic behavior of semi-rigid connections validated by experimental tests. The performance was estimated not only for the global $E_H$ demands in the steel frames; but also for, the distribution and demands of hysteretic energy in beams, columns and connections considering several levels of deformation. The results show that $E_H$ varies with ${\gamma}$, and that most of $E_H$ is dissipated by the connections. It is observed in all the cases a log-normal distribution of $E_H$ through the building height. The largest demand of $E_H$ occurs between 0.25 and 0.5 of the height. Finally, an equation is proposed to calculate the distribution of $E_H$ in terms of the normalized height of the stories (h/H) and the inter-story drift.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.408-427
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• 2011

Intensive computational complexity is an obstacle of enabling multiview video coding for real-time applications. In this paper, we present a fast macroblock (MB) mode selection algorithm for B frames which are based on the computational complexity analyses between the MB mode selection and reference frame selection. Three strategies are proposed to reduce the coding complexity jointly. First, the temporal correlation of MB modes between current MB and its temporal corresponding MBs is utilized to reduce computational complexity in determining the optimal MB mode. Secondly, Lagrangian cost of SKIP mode is compared with that of Inter $16{\times}16$ modes to early terminate the mode selection process. Thirdly, reference frame correlation among different Inter modes is exploited to reduce the number of reference frames. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can promote the encoding speed by 3.71~7.22 times with 0.08dB PSNR degradation and 2.03% bitrate increase on average compared with the joint multiview video model.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2019

In the structures with high level of ductility, the earthquake energy dissipation in structural components is an important factor that describes their seismic behavior. Since the connection details play a major role in the ductile behavior of structure, in this paper, the seismic response of 3-, 5- and 8-story steel special moment frames (SMFs) is investigated by considering the effects of panel zone modeling and the influence of forward-directivity near-field ground motions. To provide a reasonable comparison, selected records of both near and far-field are used in the nonlinear time-history analysis of models. The results of the comparison of the median maximum inter-story drift under excitation by near-field (NF) records and the far-field (FF) ground motions show that the inter-story drift demands can be obtained 3.47, 4.86 and 5.92 times in 3-, 5- and 8-story structures, respectively, undergoing near-field earthquakes.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.317-335
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• 2016

Concentrically braced steel frames (CBFs) can be optimised during the seismic design process by using lateral loading distributions derived from the concept of uniform damage distribution. However, it is not known how such structures are affected by uncertainties. This study aims to quantify and manage the effects of structural and ground-motion uncertainty on the seismic performance of optimum and conventionally designed CBFs. Extensive nonlinear dynamic analyses are performed on 5, 10 and 15-storey frames to investigate the effects of storey shear-strength and damping ratio uncertainties by using the Monte Carlo simulation method. For typical uncertainties in conventional steel frames, optimum design frames always exhibit considerably less inter-storey drift and cumulative damage compared to frames designed based on IBC-2012. However, it is noted that optimum structures are in general more sensitive to the random variation of storey shear-strength. It is shown that up to 50% variation in damping ratio does not affect the seismic performance of the optimum design frames compared to their code-based counterparts. Finally, the results indicate that the ground-motion uncertainty can be efficiently managed by optimizing CBFs based on the average of a set of synthetic earthquakes representing a design spectrum. Compared to code-based design structures, CBFs designed with the proposed average patterns exhibit up to 54% less maximum inter-storey drift and 73% less cumulative damage under design earthquakes. It is concluded that the optimisation procedure presented is reliable and should improve the seismic performance of CBFs.