• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.285-296
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• 2017

Base isolation is a quite practical control strategy for enhancing the response of structural systems induced by strong ground motions. Due to the dynamic effects of base isolation systems, reduction in the interstory drifts of the superstructure is often achieved at the expense of high base displacement level, which may lead to instability of the structure or non-practical designs for the base isolators. To reduce the base displacement, several hybrid structural control strategies have been studied over the past decades. This study investigates a particular strategy that employs Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) for improving the performance of base-isolated structures and unlike previous studies, specifically focuses on the effectiveness of this hybrid control strategy in structures that are equipped with nonlinear base isolation systems. To consider the nonlinearities of base isolation systems, a Bouc-Wen model is selected and nonlinear dynamic OpenSees models are used to perform several time-history simulations in time and frequency domains. Through these numerical simulations, the effects of several parameters such as the fundamental period of the structure, dynamic properties of the TMD and isolation systems and properties of the input ground motion on the behaviour of TMD-structure-base isolation systems are examined. The results of this study provide a better insight into the performance of linear shear-story structures with nonlinear base isolators and show that there are many scenarios in which TMDs can still improve the performance of these systems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.3
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• pp.281-292
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• 2017

Architecture constraints in buildings may typically cause irregularities in the distribution of stiffness and mass and consequently causes non-compliance of centers of mass, stiffness and strength. Such buildings are known as asymmetric buildings the distribution of strength and stiffness is one of whose main challenges. This distribution is more complicated for concrete buildings with RC shear walls in which stiffness and strength are interdependent parameters. The flexibility under the foundation is another subject that can affect this distribution due to the variation of dynamic properties of the structure and its constituting elements. In this paper, it is attempted to achieve an appropriate distribution pattern by expressing the effects of foundation flexibility on the seismic demand of concrete shear walls and also evaluate the effects of this issue on strength and stiffness distribution among lateral force resistant elements. In order to understand the importance of flexibility in strength and stiffness distribution for an asymmetric building in different conditions of under-foundation flexibility, the assigned value to each of the walls is numerically calculated and eventually a procedure for strength and stiffness distribution dependencies on flexibility is provided.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.19-33
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• 2015

Open ground storey (OGS) buildings are characterized by the sudden reduction of stiffness in the ground storey with respect to the upper infilled storeys. During earthquakes, this vertical irregularity may result in accumulated damage in the ground storey members of OGS buildings without much damage in the upper storeys. Hence, the structural design of OGS buildings needs special attention. The present study suggests a modification of existing displacement-based design (DBD) procedure by proposing a new lateral load distribution. The increased demands of ground storey members of OGS buildings are estimated based on non-linear time history analysis results of four sets of bare and OGS frames having four to ten storey heights. The relationship between the increased demand and the relative stiffness of ground storey (with respect to upper storeys) is taken as the criterion for developing the expression for the design lateral load. It is also observed that under far-field earthquakes, there is a decrease in the ground storey drift of OGS frames as the height of the frame increases, whereas there is no such reduction when these frames are subjected to near-field earthquakes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2015

In this paper Fragility Curves (FCs) relevant to existing RC framed building types representative of the Italian building population designed only to vertical load and regular in-plan have been derived from an extensive campaign of non-linear dynamic analyses. In the generation of the FCs, damage states according to the EMS98 scale have been considered while the intensity measure has been defined by adopting an integral parameter, such as the Housner intensity. FCs have been generated by varying different parameters, including building age, number of storeys, presence and position of infill panels, plan dimensions, external beams stiffness and concrete strength. In order to verify the effectiveness of the damage prediction, comparisons were made between the results obtained from the proposed FCs with those deriving from both prominent fragility studies available in the technical literature and damage distributions observed in past earthquakes. Results show that damage grades obtained by adopting the proposed FCs are generally lower than those provided by the other approaches considered. A comparison with real damage data, shows that the proposed FCs generally estimate more severe damage distributions than those observed in past earthquakes, although they give lower differences with respect to the other approaches.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.893-910
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• 2015

Earthquake safety of existing buildings has gained considerable importance after earthquakes which have occurred in our country especially in the last 30 years. Performance based assessment methods have been widely used for existing reinforced concrete structures. This study aims to investigate the earthquake performances of the building stock located in Van Lake basin in Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. The case study of buildings has been modeled on and the structural performances have been determined by employing the non-linear methods described in the latest Turkish Earthquake Code published in 2007. The Van lake basin is located on the very seismically active in a region. On October 23, 2011, a magnitude of Mw 7.2 earthquake struck the Van province in eastern Turkey. The earthquake ground motion was recorded as about 0.1g in Bitlis province. Performance evaluations have been performed by taking samples from each district consisting urban building stocks of Bitlis. A total of 16 reinforced concrete buildings have been evaluated. Among them, 53% of those buildings were determined in the Fully Operational performance level; 13% of them in the Life Safety performance and 34% of them could not be evaluated because of the ratio of the effective mass of first mode to the total mass of the buildings was smaller than 0.70. Therefore, incremental equivalent seismic load methods, which are a part of Turkish Earthquake Code -2007, cannot be used.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.435-455
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• 2012

In the recent years, rehabilitation of structures, strengthening and increasing the ductility of them under seismic loads have become so vital that many studies has been carried out on the retrofit of steel and concrete members so far. Bridge piers are very important members concerning rehabilitation, in which the plastic hinging zone is very vulnerable. Pier is usually confined by special stirrups predicted in the design procedure; moreover, fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) jackets are used after construction to confine the pier. FRP wrapping of the piers is one of the most effective ways of increasing moment and ductility capacity of them, which has a growing application due to its relative advantages. In many earthquake-resistant bridges, reinforced concrete columns have a major defect which could be retrofitted in different ways like using FRP. After rehabilitation, it is important to check the strengthening adequacy by dynamic nonlinear analysis and precise modeling of material properties. If the plastic hinge properties are simplified for the strengthened members, as the simplified properties which FEMA 356 proposes for non-strengthened members, static nonlinear analysis could be performed more easily. Current paper involves this matter and it is intended to determine the plastic hinge properties for static nonlinear analysis of the FRP-strengthened circular columns.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.59-66
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• 2010

Aerospace structures need high stability and long life because many personal injuries can result from an accident and securing structural integrity for various external environments is more important than any other thing. So first of all we must prove the destruction properties for operating environment, have prediction technology about damage evolution and life, and develop an economical non-destructive technology capable of detecting structure damage. Acoustic emission (AE) have no need of artificial environment like ultrasonic inspection or radio fluoroscopy to emit a certain energy, is a testing technique using seismic signal resulting from interior changes of solids, and enables to observe if any fault is appeared and it grows seriously or not while running. In this study we suggest the method of structural integrity evaluation for aerospace structures through the acoustic emission technique, for which a model plane was manufactured and an actual operation test was conducted.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.459-477
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• 2007

A bi-directional tuned mass damper (BTMD) in which a mass connected by two translational springs and two viscous dampers in two orthogonal directions has been introduced to control coupled lateral and torsional vibrations of asymmetric building. An efficient control strategy has been presented in this context to control displacements as well as acceleration responses of asymmetric buildings having asymmetry in both plan and elevation. The building is idealized as a simplified 3D model with two translational and a rotational degrees of freedom for each floor. The principles of rigid body transformation have been incorporated to account for eccentricity between center of mass and center of rigidity. The effective and robust design of BTMD for controlling the vibrations in structures has been presented. The redundancy of optimum design has been checked. Non dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA) has been used for tuning optimum stages and locations of BTMDs and its parameters for control of vibration of seismically excited buildings. The optimal locations have been observed to be reasonably compact and practically implementable.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.263-273
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• 2020

The use of energy concepts in seismic analysis and design of structures requires the understanding of the input energy response of multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) systems subjected to strong ground motions. For design purposes and non-time consuming analysis, however, it would be beneficial to associate the input energy response of MDOF systems with those of single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems. In this paper, the theoretical formulation of energy input to MDOF systems is developed on the basis that only a particular portion of the total mass distributed among floor levels is effective in the nth-mode response. The input energy response histories of several reinforced concrete frames subjected to a set of eleven horizontal acceleration histories selected from actual recorded events and scaled in time domain are obtained. The contribution of the fundamental mode to the total input energy response of MDOF frames is demonstrated both graphically and numerically. The input energy of the fundamental mode is found to be a good indicator of the total energy input to two-dimensional regular MDOF structures. The numerical results computed by the proposed formulation are verified with relative input energy time histories directly computed from linear time history analysis. Finally, the elastic input energies are compared with those computed from time history analysis of nonlinear MDOF systems.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.43-57
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• 2011

Force-deformation modelling of cracked reinforced concrete is essential for a displacement-based seismic assessment of structures and can be achieved by fibre-element analysis of the cross-section of the major lateral resisting elements. The non-linear moment curvature relationship obtained from fibre-element analysis takes into account the significant effects of axial pre-compression and contributions by the longitudinal reinforcement. Whilst some specialised analysis packages possess the capability of incorporating fibre-elements into the modelling (e.g., RESPONSE 2000), implementation of the analysis on EXCEL is illustrated in this paper. The outcome of the analysis is the moment-curvature relationship of the wall cross-section, curvature at yield and at damage control limit states specified by the user. Few software platforms can compete with EXCEL in terms of its transparencies, versatility and familiarity to the computer users. The program has the capability of handling arbitrary cross-sections that are without an axis of symmetry. Application of the program is illustrated with examples of typical cross-sections of structural walls. The calculated limiting curvature for the considered cross-sections were used to construct displacement profiles up the height of the wall for comparison with the seismically induced displacement demand.