• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.471-487
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• 2004

Modular steel scaffolds are commonly used as supporting scaffolds in building construction, and traditionally, the load carrying capacities of these scaffolds are obtained from limited full-scale tests with little rational design. Structural failure of these scaffolds occurs from time to time due to inadequate design, poor installation and over-loads on sites. In general, multi-storey modular steel scaffolds are very slender structures which exhibit significant non-linear behaviour. Hence, secondary moments due to both $P-{\delta}$ and $P-{\Delta}$ effects should be properly accounted for in the non-linear analyses. Moreover, while the structural behaviour of these scaffolds is known to be very sensitive to the types and the magnitudes of restraints provided from attached members and supports, yet it is always difficult to quantify these restraints in either test or practical conditions. The problem is further complicated due to the presence of initial geometrical imperfections in the scaffolds, including both member out-of-straightness and storey out-of-plumbness, and hence, initial geometrical imperfections should be carefully incorporated. This paper presents an extensive numerical study on three different approaches in analyzing and designing multi-storey modular steel scaffolds, namely, a) Eigenmode Imperfection Approach, b) Notional Load Approach, and c) Critical Load Approach. It should be noted that the three approaches adopt different ways to allow for the non-linear behaviour of the scaffolds in the presence of initial geometrical imperfections. Moreover, their suitability and accuracy in predicting the structural behaviour of modular steel scaffolds are discussed and compared thoroughly. The study aims to develop a simplified and yet reliable design approach for safe prediction on the load carrying capacities of multi-storey modular steel scaffolds, so that engineers can ensure safe and effective use of these scaffolds in building construction.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.21-33
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• 2014

The tied braced frame (TBF) system was developed to achieve uniform seismic inelastic demand along the height of multi-storey eccentrically braced steel frames. A modular tied braced frame (M-TBF) configuration has been recently proposed to reach the same objective while reducing the large axial force demand imposed on the vertical tie members connecting the link beams together in TBFs. M-TBFs may however experience variations in storey drifts at levels where the ties have been removed to form the modules. In this paper, the possibility of reducing the discontinuity in displacement response of a 16-storey M-TBF structure by introducing energy dissipating (ED) devices between the modules is examined. Two M-TBF configurations are investigated: an M-TBF with two 8-storey modules and an M-TBF with four 4-storey modules. Three types of ED devices are studied: friction dampers (FD), buckling restrained bracing (BRB) members and self-centering energy dissipative (SCED) members. The ED devices were sized such that no additional force demand was imposed on the discontinuous tie members. Nonlinear response history analysis showed that all three ED systems can be used to reduce discontinuities in storey drifts of M-TBFs. The BRB members experienced the smallest peak deformations whereas minimum residual deformations were obtained with the SCED devices.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.459-478
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• 2010

This paper contains detailed descriptions of a dynamic time-history modal analysis to calculate deflection, inter-storey drift and storey shear demand in single-storey and multi-storey buildings using an EXCEL spreadsheet. The developed spreadsheets can be used to obtain estimates of the dynamic response parameters with minimum input information, and is therefore ideal for supporting the conceptual design of tall building structures, or any other structures, in the early stages of the design process. No commercial packages, when customised, could compete with spreadsheets in terms of simplicity, portability, versatility and transparency. An innovative method for developing the stiffness matrix for the lateral load resistant elements in medium-rise and high-rise buildings is also introduced. The method involves minimal use of memory space and computational time, and yet allows for variations in the sectional properties of the lateral load resisting elements up the height of the building and the coupling of moment frames with structural walls by diaphragm action. Numerical examples are used throughout the paper to illustrate the development and use of the spreadsheet programs.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.271-277
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• 2017

Safety, livability, and efficiency are the three prominent problems of tall buildings, which are also the severe challenges to designers. We proposed the idea of building the sky town to solve these problems, which can be summarized in two sentences, one is tall building multi-storised, and another one is vertical facilities municipal-infrastructurised. The tall building can be horizontally cut into several multi-storey buildings by some large platforms. The platform extends a certain width to block the fire from spreading. Tall buildings are connected together as a group. One of them is a traffic core, which is used for vertical transportation and MEP. It connects to traffic center such as metro, while most of the other tall buildings' cores can be very much released, so as to achieve maximum efficiency of floor usable area and to give good traffic organization. By combining traffic core, platforms, and multi-storey buildings' inner traffic, a transportation network is formed. Finally, we refer to the design of Raffles City Chongqing to make a sketch of sky town.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.749-776
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• 2016

In this paper, a Performance Based Design (PBD) approach is validated for multi-storey concentrically braced frame (CBF) systems. Direct Displacement Based Design (DDBD) procedure is used and validated by designing 4- and 12-storey CBF buildings. Nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA) is used to check the performance of the design methodology by employing different accelerograms having displacement spectra matching the design displacement spectrum. Displacements and drifts obtained from NLTHA are found to fall within the design displacement limits used in the DDBD procedure. In NLTHA, both tension and compression members are found to be resisting the base shear, $F_b$, not only the tension members as assumed in the design methodology and suggested by Eurocode 8. This is the reason that the total $F_b$ in NLTHA is found to be greater than the design shear forces. Furthermore, it is found that the average of the maximum ductility values recorded from the time history analyses for the 4-and 12-storey buildings are close to the design ductility obtained from the DDBD methodology and ductility expressions established by several researchers. Moreover, the DDBD is compared to the Forced Based Design (FBD) methodology for CBFs. The comparison is carried out by designing 4 and 12-storey CBF buildings using both DDBD and FBD methodologies. The performance for both methodologies is verified using NLTHA. It is found that the $F_b$ from FBD is larger than $F_b$ obtained from DDBD. This leads to the use of larger sections for the structure designed by FBD to resist the lateral forces.

• Korean Architects
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• no.1 s.166
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• pp.82-85
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• 1983

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.6
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• pp.825-835
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• 2017

Significant improvements to methodologies on structural damage detection (SDD) have emerged in recent years. However, many methods are related to inversion computation which is prone to be ill-posed or ill-conditioning, leading to low-computing efficiency or inaccurate results. To explore a more accurate solution with satisfactory efficiency, a PSO-INM algorithm, combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and an improved Nelder-Mead method (INM), is proposed to solve multi-sample objective function defined based on Bayesian inference in this study. The PSO-based algorithm, as a heuristic algorithm, is reliable to explore solution to SDD problem converted into a constrained optimization problem in mathematics. And the multi-sample objective function provides a stable pattern under different level of noise. Advantages of multi-sample objective function and its superior over traditional objective function are studied. Numerical simulation results of a two-storey frame structure show that the proposed method is sensitive to multi-damage cases. For further confirming accuracy of the proposed method, the ASCE 4-storey benchmark frame structure subjected to single and multiple damage cases is employed. Different kinds of modal identification methods are utilized to extract structural modal data from noise-contaminating acceleration responses. The illustrated results show that the proposed method is efficient to exact locations and extents of induced damages in structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.43-67
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• 2010

A gradient-based evolutionary optimization methodology is presented for finding the optimal design of both the added dampers and their supporting members to minimize an objective function of a linear multi-storey structure subjected to the critical ground acceleration. The objective function is taken as the sum of the stochastic interstorey drifts. A frequency-dependent viscoelastic damper and the supporting member are treated as a vibration control device. Due to the added stiffness by the supplemental viscoelastic damper, the variable critical excitation needs to be updated simultaneously within the evolutionary phase of the optimal damper placement. Two different models of the entire damper unit are investigated. The first model is a detailed model referred to as "the 3N model" where the relative displacement in each component (i.e., the spring and the dashpot) of the damper unit is defined. The second model is a simpler model referred to as "the N model" where the entire damper unit is converted into an equivalent frequency-dependent Kelvin-Voigt model. Numerical analyses for 3 and 10-storey building models are conducted to investigate the characters of the optimal design using these models and to examine the validity of the proposed technique.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.607-615
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• 2018

The dynamic behavior of the deployment and folding process of a foldable boom based on the Miura origami pattern is investigated in this paper. Firstly, mechanical behavior of a single storey during the motion is studied numerically. Then the deployment and folding of a multi-storey boom is discussed. Moreover, the influence of the geometry parameters and the number of Miura-ori elements n on the dynamic behavior of the boom is also studied. Finally, the influence of the imperfection on the dynamic behavior is investigated. The results show that the angles between the diagonal folds and horizontal folds will have great effect on the strains during the motion. A bistable configuration can be obtained by choosing proper fold angles for a given multi-storey boom. The influence of the imperfection on the folding behavior of the foldable mast is significant.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2013

In this study, the modified finite element- transfer matrix methods are proposed for free vibration analysis of asymmetric structures, the bearing system of which consists of shear wall-frames. In the study, a multi-storey structure is divided into as many elements as the number of storeys and storey masses are influenced as separated at alignments of storeys. The shear walls and frames are assumed to be flexural and shear cantilever beam structures. The storey stiffness matrix is obtained by formulating the governing equation at the center of mass for the shear walls and the frames in the i.th floor. The system transfer matrix is constructed in the dimension of $6{\times}6$ by transforming the obtained stiffness matrix. Thus, the dimension, which is $12n{\times}12n$ in classical finite elements, is reduced to the dimension of $6{\times}6$. To study the suitability of the method, the results are assessed by solving two examples taken from the literature.