• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.409-418
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• 2017

Turkey owns a very important cultural and historical heritage that bears the traces of thousands of years of culture and civilization. It is an inevitable duty to carry these treasuries to the future generations. In this paper, structural safety assessment and strengthening stages of one of these important historical heritages namely Amasya Taşhan was investigated in details as a case study. For this purpose, the detailed architectural projects of the structure with the information of all load carrying and structural elements were prepared. Then, the structural dynamic analyses were performed by using SAP2000. The internal forces obtained from the dynamic analyses determined the weak regions. By obtaining the information from dynamic analyses, the method of state of the art technique of application of the structure that needs structural strengthening was selected. The last step is the application of these precautions to the whole structure. At the end of this study, this study not also contains several strengthening techniques that is used in one masonry structure together but also provides a useful reference to the practicing engineers.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.19-35
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• 2015

This study compares the seismic performances of two reinforced concrete frame specimens tested by the pseudo-dynamic procedure. The pair of 3-storey, 3-bay frames specimens are constructed with typical characteristics of older construction which is lacking seismic design. One of the specimens is a bare frame while the other is infilled with low-strength autoclave aerated concrete (AAC) block masonry. The focus of this study is to investigate the influence of low strength masonry infill walls on the seismic response of older RC frames designed for gravity loads. It is found that the presence of weak infill walls considerably reduce deformations and damage in the upper stories while their influence at the critical ground story is not all that positive. Infill walls tend to localize damage at the critical story due to a peculiar frame-infill interaction, and impose larger internal force and deformation demands on the columns and beams bounding the infills. Therefore the general belief in earthquake engineering that infills develop a second line of defence against lateral forces in seismically deficient frames is nullified in case of low-strength infill walls in the presented experimental research.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.205-219
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• 2019

In Peru, construction of dwellings using confined masonry walls (CM) has a high percentage of acceptance within many sectors of the population. It is estimated that only in Lima, 80% of the constructions use CM and at least 70% of these are informal constructions. This mean that they are built without proper technical advice and generally have a high seismic vulnerability. One way to reduce this vulnerability is by reinforcing the walls. However, despite the existence of some reinforcement methods in the market, not all of them can be applied massively because there are other parameters to take into account, as economical, criteria for seismic improvement, reinforcement ratio, etc. Therefore, in this paper the feasibility of using five reinforcement techniques has been studied and compared. These reinforcements are: welded mesh (WM), glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP), carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), steel bar wire mesh (CSM), steel reinforced grout (SRG). The Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method can be useful to evaluate the most optimal strengthening technique for a fast, effective and massive use plan in Peru. The results of using MCDM with 10 criteria indicate that the Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) and Steel Reinforced Grout (SRG) methods are the most suitable for a massive reinforcement application in Lima.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.327-336
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• 2007

Construction activities are characterized as hazardous work. Therefore, it is very imperative to explore comprehensively fatal accidents and safety performance in both developed and developing countries. The goal of this study was to look at the reasons behind fatal accidents in HCMC, Vietnam's largest city. The survey sample consists of 91 fatal accident cases in total that occurred in construction sites during the years 1996-2005 and were reported to the Department of Labor-Invalids-Social Affairs in HCMC. The study was conducted by means of field surveys with relevant individuals working in construction sites and statistical analyses. The research resulted in failing to wear/use PPE as unsafe acts and in poor safety management procedures/methods in sites as insecurely working conditions behind serious accidents in the construction. The paper stresses that accidents tended to occur more in state-owned companies than in others and involved more with masonry/welding people and workers without labor contracts than with other workers.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.203-210
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• 2019

A recent earthquake on the Korean Peninsula caused much damage to masonry buildings, and research on performance evaluation has been underway. A masonry building is generally constructed using wet construction and is affected by temperature, which reduces the efficiency of the construction. In this study, we propose a dry construction technique for assembling concrete blocks without using mortar and evaluated its performance through experimental and analytical research. To evaluate the performance, experiments were carried out for the prismatic compressive strength, direct terminal strength, and diagonal tensile strength of the dry construction wall. The adequacy of the cross section shape was also reviewed through FEM analysis. The results show that the compressive strength and diagonal tensile strength could exert a certain intensity or higher. Furthermore, the H-type module of a key block acted as a shear key for the entire concrete block, which resulted in excellent shear strength performance. In addition, the shape and thickness of the main block have a major effect on the strength performance of each block. Therefore, an optimal shape and the proposed dry construction method could be applied to replace the wet method by studying the construction or seismic performance of the proposed method.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.479-499
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• 2014

This paper illustrates the damages of reinforced concrete and masonry minarets during October 23 (Erciş) and November 9 (Edremit), 2011 Van earthquakes in Turkey. Erciş and Edremit are townships located 90km and 18km from Van city center in Turkey, respectively. Ground accelerations and response spectrums for these earthquakes are given in this paper. A total of 63 reinforced concrete and masonry minarets are heavily damaged or collapsed in the city center and villages nearby after both earthquakes. Because of the fact that there is no Turkish standard and specification directly related to design of minarets, nearly all of the constructions are carried out by workers using only their own technical knowledge. So, all of the non-engineering reinforced concrete and masonry minarets completely collapsed or damaged heavily. From the study, it is seen that the damages are due to several reasons such as site effect, location, and length of the fault, reduction in cross section and formation of the discontinuity, use of plain reinforcement steel, use of concrete with insufficient strength, existence of short lap splices and incorrect end hook angle, larger mass and stiffness concentrations on some region, longitudinal reinforcements discontinuity, cracks at the cylindrical body, and damage of spire and end ornament. In addition to these reasons, the two earthquakes hit the minarets within seventeen days, causing progressive damage. So, the existing design and construction practices should be improved to provide sufficient earthquake performance. Also, it is recommended that there should be a safe distance between the minaret and surrounding structures to reduce the loose of life after earthquake.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.113-121
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• 2015

Building using masonry accounts for most of the smaller houses in Korea but due to brittle behavior and low ductility the frequency of usage has decreased in recent years. Despite this, this form of building has been gaining attention overseas for its low cost in construction and environment-friendliness of the materials. As such, many studies are being conducted to resolve the disadvantages in structure. This study produced an specimen for masonry-filled wall and the intersection to confirm the difference in structural movement depends on the existence or lack of expansion joint and verified the reinforcement effect from inserting a connecting steel item (steel plate, stainless steel twist bar). The experiment results show that the specimen with a steel plate inserted saw an increase in durability and an improvement in the strength of the specimens, while the specimen that had stainless steel twists bar inserted saw an increase in ductility that did not cause brittle failure, indicating that the reinforcement effects of inserting a connecting steel item are effective.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.627-646
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• 2014

Adobe is one of the oldest construction materials that is still used in many seismic countries, and different construction techniques are found around the world. The adobe material is characterized as a brittle material; it has acceptable compression strength but it has poor performance under tensile and shear loading conditions. Numerical modelling is an alternative approach for studying the nonlinear behaviour of masonry structures such as adobe. The lack of a comprehensive experimental database on the adobe material properties motivated the study developed here. A set of a reference material parameters for the adobe were obtained from a calibration of numerical models based on a quasi-static cyclic in-plane test on full-scale adobe wall representative of the typical Peruvian adobe constructions. The numerical modelling, within the micro and macro modelling approach, lead to a good prediction of the in-plane seismic capacity and of the damage evolution in the adobe wall considered.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.49-62
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the building process and characteristics of Suncheon American missionary compound-missionary dwellings, medical clinics, schools and churches, for the sake of giving fundamental facts to the researcher of this field. The results of the study is summarized as follows. The construction participants of Suncheon missionary architecture are American supervisor- Rev. Preston, Elder Swinehart and Doctor Timmons, Korean christian labors, Chinese masons and Japanese carpenters. The characteristics of architectures are described as the space composition according to American life style, the architectural form of American colonial style. And also the masonry structure using the Korean domestic stones and bricks and imported various materials- such as the cements, timbers, glasses, doors and windows, etc- from the North America.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.4
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• pp.479-488
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• 2022

Aiming to examine different failure patterns in multistory URM walls, two 1/3 scaled three-story and three-bay URM models were designed for the quasi-static loading tests to contrastively investigate the failure processes and characteristics of the multistory URM walls. Two different failure responses were observed with special attention paid to the behavior of spandrel-failure mode. By evaluating the seismic performance and deformation behavior of two test walls, it is demonstrated that spandrels, that haven't been properly designed in some codes, are of great significance in the failure of entire URM walls. Additionally, compared with pier-failure mode, spandrel-failure for multistory URM building is more reasonable and advisable as its effectively participation in energy dissipation and its efficiently improvement on seismic capacity and deformation in the overall structure. Furthermore, the experimental results are beneficial to improve seismic design and optimize reinforcement method of URM buildings.