• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.89-95
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• 2013

Structures in a nuclear power system are designed to be elastic even under an earthquake excitation. However a structural component such as an isolator shows inelastic behavior inherently. For the seismic assessment of nonlinear structures, response history analysis should be performed. In this study, the response of base isolation system was analyzed by response history analysis for the seismic performance assessment. Firstly, several seismic assessment criteria for a nuclear power plant structure were reviewed for the nonlinear response history analysis. Based on these criteria, the spectrum matched ground motion generation method modifying a seed earthquake ground motion time history was adjusted. Using these spectrum matched accelerograms, the distribution of displacement responses of the simplified base isolation system was evaluated. The resulting seismic responses excited by the modified ground motion time histories and the synthesized time history generated by stochastic approach were compared. And the response analysis of the base isolation system considering the different intensities in each orthogonal direction was performed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.287-290
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• 2000

An efficient dynamic response analysis method of structures supported by nonlinear resilient mounts when subjected to the transient base excitations is presented by using the structural synthesis method in time domain. Through a numerical example, the validity of the presented method is verified by comparison of the results with those of the 'traditional' analysis method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.543-560
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• 2006

In this paper, first, the equations of motion for a rectangular isotropic plate have been derived. This derivation is based on the Von Karmann theory and the effects of shear deformation have been considered. Introducing an Airy stress function, the equations of motion have been transformed to a nonlinear coupled equation. Using Galerkin method, this equation has been separated into position and time functions. By means of the dimensional analysis, it is shown that the orders of magnitude for nonlinear terms are small with respect to linear terms. The Multiple Scales Method has been applied to the equation of motion in the forced vibration and free vibration cases and closed-form relations for the nonlinear natural frequencies, displacement and frequency response of the plate have been derived. The obtained results in comparison with numerical methods are in good agreements. Using the obtained relation, the effects of initial displacement, thickness and dimensions of the plate on the nonlinear natural frequencies and displacements have been investigated. These results are valid for a special range of the ratio of thickness to dimensions of the plate, which is a characteristic of the Multiple Scales Method. In the forced vibration case, the frequency response equation for the primary resonance condition is calculated and the effects of various parameters on the frequency response of system have been studied.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.90 no.2
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• pp.189-208
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• 2024

Artificial intelligence is one of the efficient methods that can be developed to simulate nonlinear behavior and predict the response of building structures. In this regard, an adaptive method based on optimization algorithms is used to train the TSK model of the fuzzy inference system to estimate the seismic behavior of building structures based on analytical data. The optimization algorithm is implemented to determine the parameters of the TSK model based on the minimization of prediction error for the training data set. The adaptive training is designed on the feedback of the results of previous time steps, in which three training cases of 2, 5, and 10 previous time steps were used. The training data is collected from the results of nonlinear time history analysis under 100 ground motion records with different seismic properties. Also, 10 records were used to test the inference system. The performance of the proposed inference system is evaluated on two 3 and 20-story models of nonlinear steel moment frame. The results show that the inference system of the TSK model by combining the optimization method is an efficient computational method for predicting the response of nonlinear structures. Meanwhile, the multi-vers optimization (MVO) algorithm is more accurate in determining the optimal parameters of the TSK model. Also, the accuracy of the results increases significantly with increasing the number of previous steps.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.385-392
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• 2021

Interest in the seismic performance of nuclear facilities under strong earthquakes has increased because their nonlinear response is important. In this paper, we proposed appropriate parameters for the nonlinear finite element analysis of a concrete material model, for a reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall in nuclear facilities: maximum tensile strength, dilation angle, and damage parameter. The study of the effects of the important parameters, on the nonlinear behavior and shear failure mode of the RC shear wall having low aspect ratio, was conducted using ABAQUS finite element analysis program. Based on the study results the nonlinear response of a nuclear reactor containment building (RCB) subjected to a strong earthquake was evaluated using nonlinear time-history analysis.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.2 no.6
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• pp.455-479
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• 2005

This paper describes a 2D nonlinear finite element analysis (NLFEA) platform that combines heat flow analysis with realistic analysis of cracked reinforced concrete structures. The behavior models included in the structural analysis are mainly based on the Modified Compression Field Theory and the Distributed Stress Field Model. The heat flow analysis takes into account time-varying thermal loads and temperature-dependent material properties. The capability of 2D nonlinear transient thermal analysis is then implemented into a nonlinear finite element analysis program VecTor2(C) for 2D reinforced concrete membranes. Analyses of four numerical examples are performed using VecTor2, and results obtained indicate that the suggested nonlinear finite element analysis procedure is capable of modeling the complete response of a concrete structure to thermal and mechanical loads.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.201-217
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• 2007

A harmonic type differential quadrature approach for nonlinear dynamic analysis of multi-degree-of-freedom systems has been developed. A series of numerical examples is conducted to assess the performance of the HDQ method in linear and nonlinear dynamic analysis problems. Results are compared with the existing solutions available from other analytical and numerical methods. In all cases, the results obtained are quite accurate.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.1013-1032
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• 2016

Several historical earthquakes demonstrated that local amplification and soil nonlinearity are responsible for the uneven damage pattern of the structures and lifelines. On April $25^{th}$ 2015 the Mw7.8 Gorkha earthquake stroke Nepal and neighboring countries, and caused extensive damages throughout Kathmandu valley. In this paper, comparative studies between equivalent-linear and nonlinear seismic site response analyses in five affected strategic locations are performed in order to relate the soil behavior with the observed structural damage. The acceleration response spectra and soil amplification are compared in both approaches and found that the nonlinear analysis better represented the observed damage scenario. Higher values of peak ground acceleration (PGA) and higher spectral acceleration have characterized the intense damage in three study sites and the lower values have also shown agreement with less to insignificant damages in the other two sites. In equivalent linear analysis PGA varies between 0.29 to 0.47 g, meanwhile in case of nonlinear analysis it ranges from 0.17 to 0.46 g. It is verified from both analyses that the PGA map provided by the USGS for the southern part of Kathmandu valley is not properly representative, in contrary of the northern part. Similarly, the peak spectral amplification in case of equivalent linear analysis is estimated to be varying between 2.3 to 3.8, however in case of nonlinear analysis, the variation is observed in between 8.9 to 18.2. Both the equivalent linear and nonlinear analysis have depicted the soil fundamental period as 0.4 and 0.5 sec for the studied locations and subsequent analysis for seismic demands are correlated.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1349-1362
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• 2015

This paper presents an analytical study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of using buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) in mitigating the seismic response of a case study 6 storey reinforced concrete (RC) building. In the design of the BRBs with non-prismatic cross-sections, twelve combinations of ${\alpha}$ and ${\beta}$ design parameters that influence the strength and stiffness of the BRBs, respectively, were considered. The response of the structure with and without BRBs under earthquake ground accelerations were evaluated through nonlinear dynamic analysis. Two sets of ground motions representative of the design earthquake with 10% and 50% exceedance probability in fifty years were taken into account. By comparing the structural performance of the original and buckling restrained braced structures, it was observed that the use of the BRBs were very effective in mitigating the seismic response as a retrofit scheme. However, the selection of the strength and stiffness parameters of the BRBs had considerable effect on the response characteristics of RC structures. For instance, by increasing the value of ${\alpha}$ and by decreasing the value of ${\beta}$ of the buckling-restrained braces, the maximum deformation demand of the structures increased.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2696-2707
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficiency of various structural modeling schemes for evaluating seismic performances and fragility of the reactor containment building (RCB) structure in the advanced power reactor 1400 (APR1400) nuclear power plant (NPP). Four structural modeling schemes, i.e. lumped-mass stick model (LMSM), solid-based finite element model (Solid FEM), multi-layer shell model (MLSM), and beam-truss model (BTM), are developed to simulate the seismic behaviors of the containment structure. A full three-dimensional finite element model (full 3D FEM) is additionally constructed to verify the previous numerical models. A set of input ground motions with response spectra matching to the US NRC 1.60 design spectrum is generated to perform linear and nonlinear time-history analyses. Floor response spectra (FRS) and floor displacements are obtained at the different elevations of the structure since they are critical outputs for evaluating the seismic vulnerability of RCB and secondary components. The results show that the difference in seismic responses between linear and nonlinear analyses gets larger as an earthquake intensity increases. It is observed that the linear analysis underestimates floor displacements while it overestimates floor accelerations. Moreover, a systematic assessment of the capability and efficiency of each structural model is presented thoroughly. MLSM can be an alternative approach to a full 3D FEM, which is complicated in modeling and extremely time-consuming in dynamic analyses. Specifically, BTM is recommended as the optimal model for evaluating the nonlinear seismic performance of NPP structures. Thereafter, linear and nonlinear BTM are employed in a series of time-history analyses to develop fragility curves of RCB for different damage states. It is shown that the linear analysis underestimates the probability of damage of RCB at a given earthquake intensity when compared to the nonlinear analysis. The nonlinear analysis approach is highly suggested for assessing the vulnerability of NPP structures.