• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제40권4호
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• pp.489-500
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• 2011

The elastic seismic response of plan-asymmetric multi storey steel-frame buildings is investigated under earthquake loading with particular emphasis on forward-rupture directivity and fling records. Three asymmetric building systems are generated with different torsional stiffness and varying static eccentricity. The structural characteristic of these systems are designed according to UBC 97 code and their seismic responses subjected to a set of earthquake records are obtained from the response history analysis (RHA) as well as the linear static analysis (LSA). It is shown that, the elastic torsional response is influenced by the intensity of near-fault ground motions with different energy contents. In the extreme case of very strong earthquakes, the behaviour of torsionally stiff buildings and torsionally flexible buildings may differ substantially due to the fact that the displacement envelope of the deck depends on ground motion characteristics.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제10권6호
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• pp.1369-1389
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• 2016

The soil-structure interaction effect significantly influences the design of multi-storey buildings subjected to lateral seismic loads. The shear walls are often provided in such buildings to increase the lateral stability to resist seismic loads. In the present work, the nonlinear soil-structure analysis of a G+5 storey RC shear wall building frame having isolated column footings and founded on deformable soil is presented. The nonlinear seismic FE analysis is carried out using ANSYS software for the building with and without shear walls to investigate the effect of inclusion of shear wall on the moments in the footings due to differential settlement of soil mass. The frame is considered to behave in linear elastic manner, whereas, soil mass to behave in nonlinear manner. It is found that the interaction effect causes significant variation in the moments in the footings. The comparison of non-interaction and interaction analyses suggests that the presence of shear wall causes significant decrease in bending moments in most of the footings but the interaction effect causes restoration of the bending moments to a great extent. A comparison is made between linear and nonlinear analyses to draw some important conclusions.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제28권2호
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• pp.123-138
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• 2018

Eccentrically braced frames (EBF) represent an optimal structural solution for seismic prone areas, being able to provide high dissipative capacity and good elastic stiffness, to withstand strong seismic events without significant loss of bearing capacity and to avoid damage to non-structural elements in case of low and moderate earthquakes. The accurate knowledge of the cyclic behaviour of the dissipative links, characterizing the whole performance of EBFs, is required to optimize the structural properties and to refine the design techniques adopted for multi-storey buildings' analysis. Reliable numerical models for the links, at the same time requiring a limited computational effort, are then needed. The present work shows the results of a wide experimental test campaign executed on real-scale one storey/one bay frames with horizontal and vertical links, together with the elaboration of a simple semi-analytical model for the quick representation of the cyclic behaviour of shear links.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.777-799
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• 2016

One of the major components for performance based seismic design is accurate estimation of critical seismic demand parameters. While nonlinear seismic analysis is the most appropriate analysis method for estimation of seismic demand parameters, this method is very time consuming and complex. Single mode pushover analysis method, N2 method and multi-mode pushover analysis method, modal pushover analysis (MPA) are two nonlinear static methods that have recently been used for seismic performance evaluation of few lateral load-resisting systems. This paper further investigates the applicability of N2 and MPA methods for estimating the seismic demands of ductile unstiffened steel plate shear walls (SPSWs). Three different unstiffened SPSWs (4-, 8-, and 15-storey) designed according to capacity design approach were analysed under artificial and real ground motions for Vancouver. A comparison of seismic response quantities such as, height-wise distribution of floor displacements, storey drifts estimated using N2 and MPA methods with more accurate nonlinear seismic analysis indicates that both N2 and MPA procedures can reasonably estimates the peak top displacements for low-rise SPSW buildings. In addition, MPA procedure provides better predictions of inter-storey drifts for taller SPSW. The MPA procedure has been extended to provide better estimate of base shear of SPSW.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제2권1호
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• pp.81-94
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• 1994

It is well recognized that structures designed to resist strong ground motions should be able to withstand substantial inelastic deformations. A simple procedure has been developed in this paper to monitor the dynamic earthquake response (time-history analysis) of both steel and concrete multistorey buildings in the inelastic range. The building is treated as a shear beam model with three degrees of freedom per floor. The entire analysis has been programmed to run on a microcomputer and can output time histories of displacements, velocities, accelerations and member internal forces at any desired location. A record of plastic hinge formation and restoration to elastic state is also provided. Such information can be used in aseismic analysis and design of multistorey buildings so as to control the damage and optimize their performance.

• 국제초고층학회논문집
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.261-271
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• 2020

The 2020 National Building Code of Canada (NBC) and the 2021 International Building Code (IBC) both include Tall Wood Buildings (TWB) and are hailed as documents responsible for the proliferation of Mass Timber construction. Mass Timber construction is critical to reducing the carbon footprint of the construction industry; a sector acknowledged as being one of the greatest contributors of global annual CO₂ emissions. Origine, a 13-storey multi-residential building erected in 2017 in a previously unsuitable site, is currently the tallest all-wood building in North America. This article describes the challenges overcome by the designers and client as they engaged with code officials, building authorities, and fire-service representatives to demonstrate the life-safety performance of this innovative building. It also traces the development of the "Guide for Mass Timber Buildings of up to 12 Storeys" published in Quebec and how it has enabled other significant Tall Wood projects across North America.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.71-87
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• 2014

Interaction between closely-spaced buildings subject to earthquake induced strong ground motions, termed in the literature as "seismic pounding", occurs commonly during major seismic events in contemporary congested urban environments. Seismic pounding is not taken into account by current codes of practice and is rarely considered in practice at the design stage of new buildings constructed "in contact" with existing ones. Thus far, limited research work has been devoted to quantify the influence of slab-to-slab pounding on the inelastic seismic demands at critical locations of structural members in adjacent structures that are not aligned in series. In this respect, this paper considers a typical case study of a "new" reinforced concrete (R/C) EC8-compliant, torsionally sensitive, 7-story corner building constructed within a block, in bi-lateral contact with two existing R/C 5-story structures with same height floors. A non-linear local plasticity numerical model is developed and a series of non-linear time-history analyses is undertaken considering the corner building "in isolation" from the existing ones (no-pounding case), and in combination with the existing ones (pounding case). Numerical results are reported in terms of averages of ratios of peak inelastic rotation demands at all structural elements (beams, columns, shear walls) at each storey. It is shown that seismic pounding reduces on average the inelastic demands of the structural members at the lower floors of the 7-story building. However, the discrepancy in structural response of the entire block due to torsion-induced, bi-directionally seismic pounding is substantial as a result of the complex nonlinear dynamics of the coupled building block system.

• 국제초고층학회논문집
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• 제6권3호
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• pp.261-269
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• 2017

Designed by star architect of Moshes Safdie, Raffles City Chongqing includes a total of 6 mega high-rise towers 250 to 380 m tall, a sky conservatory, a 5-storey high shopping mall and a 3-storey basement car parking. Located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jailing Rivers, the site for the project is imbued with a significance that is immediately symbolic, both as a sign of Chongqing's important past and as a vivid indicator of the city's thriving present and future. The design for the project to be situated at this gateway takes as its governing idea the image of powerful sails upon the water. The outer facades of the project's eight towers - the transparent surfaces that will face the water to the north - are meant to recall a fleet of ancient Chinese ships, with their huge rectangles of white canvas filled by the wind. This is a $1.13million\;m^2$ mega scale integrated project of office, retail, hotel, service residence and high-end residence with the transportation hub and traffic circulation at various levels of the project. This paper presents the multi-dimensional hybrid design, engineering and construction of this mega scale project. The innovations and the cutting-edge technology used in this project are introduced and discussed benchmarking the design and construction of the skyscraper cluster in a major city like Chongqing of China.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제8권5호
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• pp.1127-1146
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• 2015

The excitation angle or angle of incidence is the angle in which the horizontal seismic components are applied with respect to the principal structural axes during a time history analysis. In this study, numerical simulations and parametric studies are performed for the investigation of the effect of the angle of seismic incidence on the response of adjacent buildings, which may experience structural pounding during strong earthquakes due to insufficient or no separation distance between them. A specially developed software application has been used that implements a simple and efficient methodology, according to which buildings are modelled in three dimensions and potential impacts are simulated using a novel impact model that takes into account the arbitrary location of impacts and the geometry at the point of impact. Two typical multi-storey buildings and a set of earthquake records have been used in the performed analyses. The results of the conducted parametric studies reveal that it is very important to consider the arbitrary direction of the ground motion with respect to the structural axes of the simulated buildings, especially during pounding, since, in many cases, the detrimental effects of pounding become more pronounced for an excitation angle different from the commonly examined 0 or 90 degrees.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.269-288
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• 2000

The governing differential equations for free vibration of multi-step orthotropic shear plates with variably distributed mass, stiffness and viscous damping are established. It is shown that a shear plate can be divided into two independent shear bars to determine the natural frequencies and mode shapes of the plate. The jk-th natural frequency of a shear plate is equal to the square root of the square sum of the j-th natural frequency of a shear bar and the k-th natural frequency of another shear bar. The jk-th mode shape of the shear plate is the product of the j-th mode shape of a shear bar and the k-th mode shape of another shear bar. The general solutions of the governing equations of the orthotropic shear plates with various boundary conditions are derived by selecting suitable expressions, such as power functions and exponential functions, for the distributions of stiffness and mass along the height of the plates. A numerical example demonstrates that the present methods are easy to implement and efficient. It is also shown through the numerical example that the selected expressions are suitable for describing the distributions of stiffness and mass of typical multi-storey buildings.