• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2022

Due to the frequency and magnitude of some loads produced by gusts of turbulent wind, building floors can develop lateral displacements and significant accelerations which can produce strong inertial forces on structural, non-structural elements and occupants. A device that can help to reduce the floor accelerations is the well-known Tuned Mass Damper (TMD); however, nowadays there is no enough information about its capacity in order to dissipate energy of turbulent wind loads. For this reason, in this paper different buildings with and without TMD are modeled and dynamically analyzed under simulated wind loads in order to study the reduction of peak floor accelerations. The results indicate that peak floor accelerations can be reduced up to 40% when TMD are incorporated in the buildings, which demonstrated that the Tuned Mass Damper is an efficient device to reduce the wind effects on tall buildings.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.293-315
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• 2016

Seismic isolation is often used in protecting mission-critical structures including hospitals, data centers, telecommunication buildings, etc. Such structures typically house vibration-sensitive equipment which has to provide continued service but may fail in case sustained accelerations during earthquakes exceed threshold limit values. Thus, peak floor acceleration is one of the two main parameters that control the design of such structures while the other one is peak base displacement since the overall safety of the structure depends on the safety of the isolation system. And in case peak base displacement exceeds the design base displacement during an earthquake, rupture and/or buckling of isolators as well as bumping against stops around the seismic gap may occur. Therefore, obtaining accurate peak floor accelerations and peak base displacement is vital. However, although nominal design values for isolation system and superstructure parameters are calculated in order to meet target peak design base displacement and peak floor accelerations, their actual values may potentially deviate from these nominal design values. In this study, the sensitivity of the seismic performance of structures equipped with linear and nonlinear seismic isolation systems to the aforementioned potential deviations is assessed in the context of a benchmark shear building under different earthquake records with near-fault and far-fault characteristics. The results put forth the degree of sensitivity of peak top floor acceleration and peak base displacement to superstructure parameters including mass, stiffness, and damping and isolation system parameters including stiffness, damping, yield strength, yield displacement, and post-yield to pre-yield stiffness ratio.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.163-170
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• 2020

Floor acceleration plays a major role in the seismic design of nonstructural components and equipment supported by structures. Large floor acceleration may cause structural damage to or even collapse of buildings. For precision instruments in high-tech factories, even small floor accelerations can cause considerable damage in this study. Six P-wave parameters, namely the peak measurement of acceleration, peak measurement of velocity, peak measurement of displacement, effective predominant period, integral of squared velocity, and cumulative absolute velocity, were estimated from the first 3 s of a vertical ground acceleration time history. Subsequently, a new predictive algorithm was developed, which utilizes the aforementioned parameters with the floor height and fundamental period of the structure as the new inputs of a support vector regression model. Representative earthquakes, which were recorded by the Structure Strong Earthquake Monitoring System of the Central Weather Bureau in Taiwan from 1992 to 2016, were used to construct the support vector regression model for predicting the peak floor acceleration (PFA) of each floor. The results indicated that the accuracy of the predicted PFA, which was defined as a PFA within a one-level difference from the measured PFA on Taiwan's seismic intensity scale, was 96.96%. The proposed system can be integrated into the existing earthquake early warning system to provide complete protection to life and the economy.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.49-63
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• 2022

This study aims to develop ensemble machine learning (ML) models for estimating the peak floor acceleration and maximum top drift of steel moment frames. For this purpose, random forest, adaptive boosting, gradient boosting regression tree (GBRT), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models were considered. A total of 621 steel moment frames were analyzed under 240 ground motions using OpenSees software to generate the dataset for ML models. From the results, the GBRT and XGBoost models exhibited the highest performance for predicting peak floor acceleration and maximum top drift, respectively. The significance of each input variable on the prediction was examined using the best-performing models and Shapley additive explanations approach (SHAP). It turned out that the peak ground acceleration had the most significant impact on the peak floor acceleration prediction. Meanwhile, the spectral accelerations at 1 and 2 s had the most considerable influence on the maximum top drift prediction. Finally, a graphical user interface module was created that places a pioneering step for the application of ML to estimate the seismic demands of building structures in practical design.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2013

This article presents the statistical characteristics of elastic floor acceleration spectra that represent the peak response demand of non-structural components attached to a nonlinear supporting frame. For this purpose, a set of stiff and flexible general moment resisting frames with periods of 0.3-3.6 sec. are analyzed using forty-nine near-field strong ground motion records. Peak accelerations are derived for each single degree of freedom non-structural component, supported by the above mentioned frames, through a direct-integration time-history analysis. These accelerations are obtained by Floor Acceleration Response Spectrum (FARS) method. They are statistically analyzed in the next step to achieve a better understanding of their height-wise distributions. The factors that affect FARS values are found in the relevant state of the art. Here, they are summarized to evaluate the amplification and/or reduction of FARS values especially when the supporting structures undergo inelastic behavior. The properties of FARS values are studied in three regions: long-period, fundamental-period and short-period. Maximum elastic acceleration response of non-structural component, mounted on inelastic frames, depends on the following factors: inelasticity intensity and modal periods of supporting structure; natural period, damping ratio and location of non-structural component. The FARS values, corresponded to the modal periods of supporting structure, are strongly reduced beyond elastic domain. However, they could be amplified in the transferring period domain between the mentioned modal periods. In the next step, the amplification and/or reduction of FARS values, caused by inelastic behavior of supporting structure, are calculated. A parameter called the response acceleration reduction factor ($R_{acc}$), has been previously used for far-field earthquakes. The feasibility of extending this parameter for near-field motions is focused here, suggested repeatedly in the relevant sources. The nonlinearity of supporting structure is included in ($R_{acc}$) for better estimation of maximum non-structural component absolute acceleration demand, which is ordinarily neglected in the seismic design provisions.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.577-589
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• 2023

In this study, on-site testing was carried out to investigate the vibration performance of a cold-formed thin-walled steel floor system. Ambient vibration, walking excitation (single and double persons), and impulsive excitation (heel-drop and jumping) were considered to capture the primary vibration parameters (natural frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes) and vertical acceleration response. Meanwhile, to discuss the influence of cement fiberboard on structural vibration, the primary vibration parameters were compared between the systems with and without the installation of cement fiberboard. Based on the experimental analysis, the cold-formed thin-walled steel floor possesses high frequency (> 10 Hz) and damping (> 2%); the installed cement fiberboard mainly increases the mass of floor system without effectively increasing the floor stiffness and may reduce the effects of primary vibration parameters on acceleration response; and the human-structure interaction should be considered when analyzing the vibration serviceability. The comparison of the experimental results with those in the AISC Design Guide indicates that the cold-formed thin-walled steel floor exhibits acceptable vibration serviceability. A crest factor 𝛽_rp (ratio of peak to root-mean-square accelerations) is proposed to determine the root-mean-square acceleration for convenience.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.551-562
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• 2021

In this study, the generalized intensity measure (IM) named I_Npg is analyzed. The recently proposed proxy of the spectral shape named N_pg is the base of this intensity measure, which is similar to the traditional N_p based on the spectral shape in terms of pseudo-acceleration; however, in this case the new generalized intensity measure can be defined through other types of spectral shapes such as those obtained with velocity, displacement, input energy, inelastic parameters and so on. It is shown that this IM is able to increase the efficiency in the prediction of nonlinear behavior of structures subjected to earthquake ground motions. For this work, the efficiency of two particular cases (based on acceleration and velocity) of the generalized I_Npg to predict the peak floor acceleration demands on steel frames under 30 earthquake ground motions with respect to the traditional spectral acceleration at first mode of vibration Sa(T₁) is compared. Additionally, a 3D reinforced concrete building and an irregular steel frame is used as a basis for comparison. It is concluded that the use of velocity and acceleration spectral shape increase the efficiency to predict peak floor accelerations in comparison with the traditional and most used around the world spectral acceleration at first mode of vibration.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.469-478
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• 2017

This paper summarizes estimated seismic response results from three-dimensional nonlinear inelastic time-history analyses of some steel buckling-restrained braced (BRB) structures taking into account soil-structure interaction (SSI). The response results involve mean values for peak interstorey drift ratios, peak interstorey residual drift ratios and peak floor accelerations. Moreover, mean seismic demands in terms of axial force and rotation in columns, of axial and shear forces and bending moment in BRB beams and of axial displacement in BRBs are also discussed. For comparison purposes, three separate configurations of the BRBs have been considered and the aforementioned seismic response and demands results have been obtained firstly by considering SSI effects and then by neglecting them. It is concluded that SSI, when considered, may lead to larger interstorey and residual interstorey drifts than when not. These drifts did not cause failure of columns and of the BRBs. However, the BRB beam may fail due to flexure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.325-339
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• 2013

A number of structural and modal parameters are derived from the strong motion records of an instrumented G + 9 storeyed RC building during Bhuj earthquake, 26 Jan. 2001 in India. Some of the extracted parameters are peak floor accelerations, storey drift and modal characteristics. Modal parameters of the building are also compared with the values obtained from ambient vibration survey of the instrumented building after the occurrence of earthquake. These parameters are further used for calibrating the accuracy of fixed-base Finite Element (FE) models considering structural and non-structural elements. Some conclusions are drawn based on theoretical and experimental results obtained from strong motion records and time history analysis of FE models. An important outcome of the study is that strong motion peak acceleration profile in two horizontal directions is close to FE model in which masonry infill walls are modeled.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.1223-1240
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• 2014

Seismic isolation has been established as an effective earthquake-resistant design method and the lead rubber bearings (LRBs) are among the most commonly used seismic isolation systems. In the scientific literature, a sharp bilinear model is often used for capturing the hysteretic behaviour of the LRBs in the analysis of seismically isolated structures, although the actual behaviour of the LRBs can be more accurately represented utilizing smoothed plasticity, as captured by the Bouc-Wen model. Discrepancies between these two models are quantified in terms of the computed peak relative displacements at the isolation level, as well as the peak inter-storey deflections and the absolute top-floor accelerations, for the case of base-isolated buildings modelled as multi degree-of-freedom systems. Numerical simulations under pulse-like ground motions have been performed to assess the effect of non-linear parameters of the seismic isolation system and characteristics of both the superstructure and the earthquake excitation, on the accuracy of the computed peak structural responses. Through parametric analyses, this paper assesses potential inaccuracies of the computed peak seismic response when the sharp bilinear model is employed for modelling the LRBs instead of the more accurate and smoother Bouc-Wen model.