• Wind and Structures
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.625-639
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• 2015

Monopiles have been most widely used for supporting offshore wind turbines (OWTs) in shallow water areas. However, multi-member lattice-type structures such as jackets and tripods are also considered good alternatives to monopile foundations for relatively deep water areas with depth ranging from 25-50 m owing to their technical and economic feasibility. Moreover, jacket structures have been popular in the oil and gas industry for a long time. However, several unsolved technical issues still persist in the utilization of multi-member lattice-type supporting structures for OWTs; these problems include pile-soil-interaction (PSI) effects, realization of dynamically stable designs to avoid resonances, and quick and safe installation in remote areas. In this study, the effects of PSI on the dynamic properties of bottom-fixed OWTs, including monopile-, tripod- and jacket-supported OWTs, were investigated intensively. The tower and substructure were modeled using conventional beam elements with added mass, and pile foundations were modeled with beam and nonlinear spring elements. The effects of PSI on the dynamic properties of the structure were evaluated using Monte Carlo simulation considering the load amplitude, scouring depth, and the uncertainties in soil properties.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.261-271
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• 2016

In the prediction of response of a pile in soil, numerical approaches such as a finite element method are generally applied due to complicate nonlinear behaviors of soils. However, the numerical methods based on the finite elements require heavy efforts in pile and soil modelling and also take long computing time. So their usage is limited especially in the early design stage in which principal dimensions and properties are not specified and tend to vary. On the contrary, theoretical approaches adopting linear approximations for soils are relatively simple and easy to model and take short computing time. Therefore, if they are validated to be reliable, they would be applicable in predicting responses of a pile in soil, particularly in early design stage. In case of wind turbines regarded in this study, it is required to assess their natural frequencies in early stages, and in this simulation the supporting pile inserted in soil could be replaced with a simplified elastic boundary condition at the bottom end of the wind turbine tower. To do this, analysis for a pile in soil is performed in this study to extract the spring constants at the top end of the pile. The pile in soil can be modelled as a beam on elastic spring by assuming that the soils deform within an elastic range. In this study, it is attempted to predict pile deformations and influence factors for lateral loads by means of the beam-on-spring model. As two example supporting structures for wind turbines, mono pile and suction pile models with different diameters are examined by evaluating their influence factors and validated by comparing them with those reported in literature. In addition, the deflection profiles along the depth and spring constants at the top end of the piles are compared to assess their supporting features.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.573-588
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• 2017

The earthquake input is required when the soil-structure interaction (SSI) analysis is performed by the direct finite element method. In this paper, the earthquake is considered as the obliquely incident plane body wave arising from the truncated linearly elastic layered half space. An earthquake input method is developed for the time-domain three-dimensional SSI analysis. It consists of a new site response analysis method for free field and the viscous-spring artificial boundary condition for scattered field. The proposed earthquake input method can be implemented in the process of building finite element model of commercial software. It can result in the highly accurate solution by using a relatively small SSI model. The initial condition is considered for the nonlinear SSI analysis. The Daikai subway station is analyzed as an example. The effectiveness of the proposed earthquake input method is verified. The effect of the obliquely incident earthquake is studied.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.3-16
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• 1999

The objective of BMP( Barge Mounted Plant) project is to construct plants on mooring floating structures at sea. To analyze the pile behavior under mooring dolphins, generally, axial or lateral behavior of soil-pile system is evaluated by using a nonlinear subgrade reaction method which models the pile as a structural element and the soil as series of nonlinear springs along the depth. As a result, load-displacement curves at pile head can be solved by finite difference method and the equivalent stiffness of bottom boundaries of dolphin structure is evaluated. In this study off-shore site investigation was performed on the marine area of Koje Island and axial and lateral load transfer curves of the ground were modeled with depth. The subgrade reaction analysis was performed for piles under axial or lateral loadings, and the required penetration depth and section of the pile were determined. Subsequently, the spring boundaries under the dolphin structure could be modeled from the calculated load-displacement curve and then the dynamic response of the dolphin structure was analyzed reasonably by considering ground conditions. The analysis considering the stiffness of the soil-pile system has resulted in larger displacement amplitudes than those for rigid foundations. Furthermore, moment distributions of the casing were dependent on the soil-pile system so that deformable foundation induces the larger moment of top section of casing and the smaller moment of pile head.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.425-434
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• 2019

It is important to ensure the seismic safety of pile-bent bridges constructed in areas with thick soft ground consisting of various soil layers against seismic motion in these layers. In this study, several synthetic seismic waves that are compatible with the seismic design spectrum for rock sites were generated, and the ground acceleration history of each soil layer was obtained based on ground analyses. Using these acceleration histories, each soil layer was modeled using equivalent linear springs, and multi-support excitation analyses were performed using the input motion obtained at each soil layer. Due to the nonlinear behavior of the soft soil layers, the intensity of the input ground motion was not amplified, which resulted in the elastic behavior of the bridge. In addition, inputting the acceleration history obtained from a particular layer simultaneously into all the ground springs reduced the response. Therefore, the seismic performance of this type of bridge might be overestimated if multi-excitation analysis is not performed.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.301-310
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• 2016

There are differences in seismic behavior between non-skewed bridges and skewed bridges due to in-plane rotations caused by pounding between the skewed deck and its abutments during strong earthquake. Many advances have been made in developing design codes and guidelines for dynamic analyses of non-skewed bridges. However, there remain significant uncertainties with regard to the structural response of skewed bridges caused by unusual seismic response characteristics. The purpose of this study is performing non-linear time history analysis of the bridges using abutment-soil interaction model considering pounding between the skewed deck and its abutments, and analyzing global seismic behavior characteristics of the skewed bridges to assess the possibility of unseating. Refined bridge model with abutment back fill, shear key and elastomeric bearing was developed using non-linear spring element. In order to evaluate the amplification of longitudinal and transverse displacement response, non-linear time history analysis was performed for single span bridges. Far-fault and near-fault ground motions were used as input ground motions. According to each parameter, seismic behavior of skewed bridges was evaluated.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.137-144
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• 2019

For the structures near the seismogenic fault, the evaluation of seismic performance against near-fault ground motions is important as well as for design ground motions. In this study, characteristics of seismic behaviors and seismic performance of the pile-bent bridge constructed on the thick soft soil site with various weak soil layers were analyzed. The input ground motions were synthesized by the directivity pulse parameters for intra-plate regions. The ground motion acceleration histories of each layer were obtained by one-dimensional site response analysis. Each soil layer was modeled by equivalent linear springs, and multi-support excitations with different input ground motions at each soil spring were applied for nonlinear seismic analyses. The analysis result by the near-fault ground motions and ground motions matched to design spectra were compared. In case of the near fault ground motion input, the bridge behaved within the elastic range but the location of the maximum moment occurred was different from the result of design ground motion input.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2015

Recently, several researches on the development of new economical anchor systems have been performed to support floating structures. This study focused on the group suction piles, which connect mid-sized suction piles instead of a single suction pile with large-diameter. The group suction pile shows the complex bearing behavior with translation and rotation, so it is difficult to apply conventional design methods. Therefore, the numerical modeling technique was developed to evaluate the horizontal bearing capacity of the group suction piles in clay. The technique models suction piles as beam elements and soil reaction as non-linear springs. To analyze the applicability of the modeling, the horizontal load-movement curves of the proposed modeling were compared with those of three-dimensional finite element analyses. The comparison showed that the modeling underestimates the capacity and overestimate the displacement corresponding to the maximum capacity. Therefore, the correction factors for the horizontal soil resistance was proposed to match the bearing capacity from the three-dimensional finite element analyses.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.53-68
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• 1981

Most clays under sustained load exhibit time-dependent deformation because of creep movement of soil particles and many investigators have attempted to relate their findings to the creep behavior of natural ground and to the long-term stability of slopes. Since the creep behavior of clays may assume a variety of forms depending on such factors as soil plasticity, activity and water content, it is difficult and complicated to analyse the creep behavior of clays. Rheological models composed of linear springs in combination with linear or nonlinear dashpots and sliders, are generally used for the mathematical description of the time-dependent behavior of soils. Most rheological models, however, have been proposed to simulate the behavior of secondary compression for saturated clays and few definitive data exist that can evaluate the behavior of non-saturated clays under the action of sustained stress. The clays change gradually from a solid state through plastic state to a liquid state with increasing water content, therefore, the rheological models also change. On the other hand, creep is time-dependent, and also the effect of thixotropy is time-function. Consequently, there may be certain correlations between creep behavior and the effects of thixotropy in compacted clays. In addition, the states of clay depend on water content and hence the height of the specimen under drained conditions. Futhermore, based on present and past studies, because immediate elastic deformation occurs instantly after the pressure increment without time-delayed behavior, the factor representing immediate elastic deformations in the rheological model is necessary. The investigation described in this paper, based on rheological model, is designed to identify the immediate elastic deformations and the effects of thixotropy and height of clay specimens with varing water content and stress level on creep deformations. For these purposes, the uniaxial drain-type creep tests were performed. Test results and data for three compacted clays have shown that a linear top spring is needed to account for immediate elastic deformations in the rheological model, and at lower water content below the visco-plastic limit, the effects of thixotropy and height of clay specimens can be represented by the proposed rheological model not considering the effects. Therefore, the rheological model does not necessitate the other factors representing these effects. On the other hand, at water content higher than the visco-plastic limit, although the state behavior of clays is visco-plastic or viscous flow at the beginning of the test, the state behavior, in the case of the lower height sample, does not represent the same behavior during the process of the test, because of rapid drainage. In these cases, the rheological model does not coincide with the model in the case of the higher specimens.