• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.377-386
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• 2017

Earthquake-induced pounding damages to building structures were repeatedly observed in many previous major earthquakes. Extensive researches have been carried out in this field. Previous studies mainly focused on the regular shaped buildings and each building was normally simplified as a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system or a multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) system by assuming the masses of the building lumped at the floor levels. The researches on the pounding responses between irregular asymmetric buildings are rare. For the asymmetric buildings subjected to earthquake loading, torsional vibration modes of the structures are excited, which in turn may significantly change the structural responses. Moreover, contact element was normally used to consider the pounding phenomenon in previous studies, which may result in inaccurate estimations of the structural responses since this method is based on the point-to-point pounding assumption with the predetermined pounding locations. In reality, poundings may take place between any locations. In other words, the pounding locations cannot be predefined. To more realistically consider the arbitrary poundings between asymmetric structures, detailed three-dimensional (3D) finite element models (FEM) and arbitrary pounding algorithm are necessary. This paper carries out numerical simulations on the pounding responses between a symmetric rectangular-shaped building and an asymmetric L-shaped building by using the explicit finite element code LS-DYNA. The detailed 3D FEMs are developed and arbitrary 3D pounding locations between these two buildings under bi-directional earthquake ground motions are investigated. Special attention is paid to the relative locations of two adjacent buildings. The influences of the left-and-right, fore-and-aft relative locations and separation gap between the two buildings on the pounding responses are systematically investigated.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.473-494
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• 2014

Progressive collapse, which is referred to as the collapse of the entire building under local damages, is a common failure mode happened by earthquakes. The collapse process highly depends on the whole structural system. Since, asymmetry of the building plan leads to the local damage concentration; it may intensify the progressive collapse mechanism of asymmetric buildings. In this research the progressive collapse of regular and irregular 6-story RC ordinary moment resisting frame buildings are studied in the presence of the earthquake loads. Collapse process and collapse propagation are investigated using nonlinear time history analyses (NLTHA) in buildings with 5%, 15% and 25% mass asymmetry with respect to the number of collapsed hinges and story drifts criteria. Results show that increasing the value of mass eccentricity makes the asymmetric buildings become unstable earlier and in the early stages with lower number of the collapsed hinges. So, with increasing the mass eccentricity in building, instability and collapse of the entire building occurs earlier, with lower potential of the progressive collapse. It is also demonstrated that with increasing the mass asymmetry the decreasing trend of the number of collapsed beam and column hinges is approximately similar to the decreasing trend in the average story drifts of the mass centers and stiff edges. So, as an alternative to a much difficult-to-calculate local response parameter of the number of collapsed hinges, the story drift, as a global response parameter, measures the potential of progressive collapse more easily.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.37-44
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• 1997

In this paper, the inelastic behavior of an asymmetric tall building is investigated. The asymmetry in rigidity caused by the structural asymmetry induces torsional as well as lateral deformation. The inelastic analysis of such an asymmetric structure is difficult to carry out with a planar model and thus requires a full three dimensional model. In this paper a 102 story unsymmetric tall building is analized by static push-over procedure and its behavior is investigated. The analysis are performed with and without floor rotation to compare the results. According to the results the static behavior of the model building, as expected, turned out to be dependent heavily an the asymmetry of the plan shapes of the building.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.314-321
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• 2000

Excessive torsional behavior of asymmetric building structures is observed to be the main cause of the poor seismic performance. Concepts of current design provisions for torsion are based on the assumption that the strength of the lateral load resisting elements can be adjusted without changing their stiffness. This paper investigates inelastic torsional effects of multi-story high rise residential building in Korea on increase of strength demand and ductility of members using some methods published in literature. The methods analyze the reduction of strength and member ductility resulting from torsional mechanisms. This study shows that use of these concepts control inelastic torsion during preliminary seismic design of multi-story building of irregular plans.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.587-607
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• 2014

Progressive collapse, which is referred to as the collapse of the entire building under local damages, is a common failure mode happened by earthquakes. The collapse process highly depends on the whole structural system. Since, asymmetry of the building plan leads to the local damage concentration; it may intensify the progressive collapse mechanism of asymmetric buildings. In this research the progressive collapse of regular and irregular 6-story RC ordinary moment resisting frame buildings are studied in the presence of the earthquake loads. Collapse process and collapse propagation are investigated using nonlinear time history analyses (NLTHA) in buildings with 5%, 15% and 25% mass asymmetry with respect to the number of collapsed hinges and story drifts criteria. Results show that increasing the value of mass eccentricity makes the asymmetric buildings become unstable earlier and in the early stages with lower number of the collapsed hinges. So, with increasing the mass eccentricity in building, instability and collapse of the entire building occurs earlier, with lower potential of the progressive collapse. It is also demonstrated that with increasing the mass asymmetry the decreasing trend of the number of collapsed beam and column hinges is approximately similar to the decreasing trend in the average story drifts of the mass centers and stiff edges. So, as an alternative to a much difficult-to-calculate local response parameter of the number of collapsed hinges, the story drift, as a global response parameter, measures the potential of progressive collapse more easily.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.137-148
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• 2019

Korean piloti-type buildings are comprised of pilotis in the first story and shear walls in the upper stories. This vertical irregularity causes excessive lateral plastic deformation on the first story while the upper stories stay elastic. Meanwhile, asymmetric position of structural components such as core walls and columns of RC piloti-type buildings tends to produce torsional irregularities of the structures. Korean Building Code(KBC2016) requires the special seismic load and torsional amplification factor to apply to the piloti-type buildings lower than six-story or 20m if it has vertical and torsional irregularities when the building corresponds to seismic design category C or D. Many Korean low-rised RC buildings fall into the class. Therefore, the special earthquake load and torsional amplification factor are often applied to a building simultaneously. However, it has not been studied enough how much influence each parameter has on buildings with vertical and torsional irregularities at the same time. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of factor special seismic load and torsional amplification on seismic performance of irregular buildings. In this study, a damaged 4^th story piloti-type building by the Pohang earthquake was selected and the earthquake response analysis was carried out with various seismic design methods by the KBC 2016. The effect of the design parameters on seismic performance was analyzed by the dynamic analysis of models with special seismic load and torsional amplification factor based on the selected building. It was concluded that the application of the torsional amplification factor to the reference model to which special seismic design was applied, does not significantly affect the seismic performance.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.349-361
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• 2024

Excessive torsional behaviour is one of the major reasons for failure of buildings, as inferred from past earthquakes. Numerous seismic codes across the world specify a displacement-based or drift-based criterion for classifying buildings as torsionally irregular. In recent years, quite a few researchers have pointed out some of the inherent deficiencies associated with the current codal guidelines on torsional irregularity. This short communication paper aims to envisage the need for a revision of the displacement-based guidelines on torsional irregularity, and further highlight the appropriateness of a rotation-based criterion. A set of 6 reinforced concrete building models with asymmetric shear walls are analysed using ETABS v18.0.2, by varying the number of stories from 1 to 9, and the torsional irregularity coefficient of various stories is calculated using the displacement-based formula. Since rotation about the vertical axis is a direct indication of the twist experienced by a building, the calculated torsional irregularity coefficients of all stories are compared with the corresponding floor rotations. The conflicting results obtained for the torsional irregularity coefficients are projected through five categories, namely mismatch with floor rotations, inconsistency in trend, lack of clarity in incorporation of negative values, sensitivity to low values of displacement and error conceived in the mathematical formulation. The findings indicate that the irregularity coefficient does not accurately represent the torsional behaviour of buildings in a realistic sense. The Indian seismic code-based values of 1.2 and 1.4, which are used to characterize buildings as torsionally irregular are observed to be highly sensitive to the numerical values of displacements, rather than the actual degree of rotation. The study thus emphasizes the revision of current guidelines based on a more relevant rotation-based or eccentricity-based approach.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.539-549
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• 2017

Existing reinforced concrete frame buildings designed for vertical loads could only suffer severe damage during earthquakes. In recent years, many research activities were undertaken to develop a reliable and practical analysis procedure to identify the safety level of existing structures. The Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is considered to be one of the most accurate methods to estimate the seismic demand and capacity of structures. However, the executions of many nonlinear response history analyses (NL_RHA) are required to describe the entire range of structural response. The research discussed in this paper deals with the proposal of an efficient Incremental Modal Pushover Analysis (IMPA) to obtain capacity curves by replacing the nonlinear response history analysis of the IDA procedure with Modal Pushover Analysis (MPA). Firstly, In this work, the MPA is examined and extended to three-dimensional asymmetric structures and then it is incorporated into the proposed procedure (IMPA) to estimate the structure's seismic response and capacity for given seismic actions. This new procedure, which accounts for higher mode effects, does not require the execution of complex NL-RHA, but only a series of nonlinear static analysis. Finally, the extended MPA and IMPA were applied to an existing irregular framed building.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.35-44
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• 2008

A self-centering energy-dissipative(SCED) bracing system has recently been developed as a new seismic force resistant bracing system. The advantage of the SCED brace system is that, unlike other comparable advanced bracing systems that dissipate energy such as the buckling restrained brace(BRB) system, it has a self-centering capability that reduces or eliminates residual building deformations after major seismic events. In order to investigate the effects of torsion on the SCED brace and BRB systems, nonlinear time history analyses were used to compare the responses of 3D model structures with three different amounts of frame eccentricity. The results of the analysis showed that the interstory drifts of SCED braced frames are more uniform than those of BRB frames, without regard to irregularity. The residual drift and residual rotation responses tended to decrease as irregularity increased. For medium-rise structures, the drift concentration factors(DCFs) for SCED systems were lower than those for BRB frames. This means that SCED-braced frames deform in a more uniform manner with respect to building height. The effect of the torsional irregularity on the magnitude of the DCFs was small.