• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-44
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• 2013

Post earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to the collapse of buildings that are partially damaged in a prior ground-motion that occurred immediately before the fire. The majority of standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the possibility of PEF and thus buildings designed with those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the Life-Safety performance level of structures designed to the ACI 318-08 code after they are subjected to two different earthquake levels with PGA of 0.35 g and 0.25 g. This is followed by a four-hour fire analysis of the weakened structure, from which the time it takes for the weakened structure to collapse is calculated. As a benchmark, the fire analysis is also performed for undamaged structure and before occurrence of earthquake. The results show that the vulnerability of structures increases dramatically when a previously damaged structure is exposed to PEF. The results also show the damaging effects of post earthquake fire are exacerbated when initiated from second and third floor. Whilst the investigation is for a certain class of structures (regular building, intermediate reinforced structure, 3 stories), the results confirm the need for the incorporation of post earthquake fire in the process of analysis and design and provides some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.379-394
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• 2013

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to a rapid collapse of buildings damaged partially as a result of prior earthquake. Almost all standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the risk of PEF, and thus buildings designed using those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the Immediate Occupancy, Life Safety and Collapse Prevention performance levels of structures, designed to the ACI 318-08 code, after they are subjected to an earthquake level with PGA of 0.35g. This investigation is followed by a fire analysis of the damaged structures, examining the time taken for the damaged structures to collapse. As a point of reference, a fire analysis is also performed for undamaged structures and before the occurrence of earthquake. The results indicate that the vulnerability of structures increases dramatically when a previously damaged structure is exposed to PEF. The results also show that the damaging effects of post-earthquake fire are exacerbated when initiated from the second and third floor. Whilst the investigation is made for a certain class of structures (conventional buildings, intermediate reinforced structure, 3 stories), the results confirm the need for the incorporation of post-earthquake fire into the process of analysis and design, and provides some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.3-11
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• 2019

The recent earthquake of Pohang (M5.4) and the Gyeongju earthquake (M5.8) suggested the possibility of a strong earthquake in Korea and reminded us that the Korea is no longer an earthquake-safe zone. In the disaster recovery stage in a disaster like an earthquake, the investigation of the damage situation and the safety assessment of the building serve to provide important information for the initial action such as establishment of the recovery strategy and rescue of the survivor. However, the research that depends on manpower can not cope with the difficulty of processing a large number of doses in a short time, and the expertise of the manpower must be taken into consideration, which may result in delayed initial action. In this study, we propose an rapid safety evaluation technique of building using unmanned aerial vehicle which evaluates the performance and safety of buildings by integrating conventional safety inspection method with unmanned aerial vehicle technology and developed evaluation method of each evaluation factor. In order to verify this, the buildings damaged by the earthquake in Pohang were checked and compared using this system. The results are consistent with the results of the existing emergency earthquake risk assessment. As a result, the possibility of checking the emergency safety using the unmanned aerial vehicle for the damaged structures in case of a large-scale disaster such as an earthquake was confirmed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.351-364
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• 2019

Earthquake and fire are both severe disasters for building structures. Since earthquake-induced damage will weaken the structure and reduce its fire endurance, it is important to investigate the behavior of structure subjected to post-earthquake fire. In this paper, steel-concrete composite beam-to-column joints were tested under fire with pre-damage caused by cyclic loads. Beforehand, three control specimens with no pre-damage were tested to capture the static, cyclic and fire-resistant performance of intact joints. Experimental data including strain, deflection and temperature recorded at several points are presented and analyzed to quantify the influence of cyclic damage on fire resistance. It is indicated that the fire endurance of damaged joints decreased with the increase of damage level, mainly due to faster heating-up rate after cyclic damage. However, cracks induced by cyclic loading in concrete are found to mitigate the concrete spalling at elevated temperatures. Moreover, the relationship between fire resistance and damage degree is revealed from experimental results, which can be applied in fire safety design and is worthwhile for further research.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.89-95
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• 2003

In this paper, an algorithm to locate and size damage in a complex truss structure using the time domain response is presented. Sampled response data for specific time interval is spatially expanded over the structure to obtain the mean train energy for each element of the structure. The mean strain energy for each element is, in turn, used to build a damage index that represents the ratio of the stiffness parameter of the pre-damaged to the post-damaged structure. The validity of the methodology is demonstrated using data from a numerical example of a space truss structure with simulated damage. Also in the example, the effects of noisy data on the proposed algorithm are examined by adding random noised to the response data.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.293-303
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• 2022

In order to improve the seismic resilience of coupled wall structure, coupling beam with fuse has been developed to reduce the post-earthquake damage. However, the fuses often have a build-up I-shaped section and are relatively heavy to be replaced. Moreover, the fuse and the beam segments are usually connected by bolts and it is time-consuming to replace the damaged fuse. For reducing the repair time and cost, a novel quickly replaceable coupling beam with buckling-restrained energy dissipaters is developed. The fuse of the proposed coupling beam consists of two chord members and bar-typed energy dissipaters placed at the corners of the fuse. In this way, the weight of the energy dissipater can be greatly reduced. The energy dissipaters and the chords are connected with hinge and it is convenient to take down the damaged energy dissipater. The influence of ratio of the length of coupling beam to the length of fuse on the seismic performance of the structure is also studied. The seismic performance of the coupled wall system with the proposed coupling beam is compared with the system with reinforced concrete coupling beams. Results indicated that the weight and post-earthquake repair cost of the proposed fuse can be reduced compared with the typical I-shaped fuse. With the increase of the ratio of the beam length to the fuse length, the interstory drift of the structure is reduced while the residual fuse chord rotation is increased.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.87-94
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• 1995

In highway bridges robust damage detection exercises are mandatory to secure the safety of the structures from hostile environmental conditions such as fatigue earthquake, wind, and corrosion. This paper presents a damage detection practice in a full-scale highway bridge by utilizing modal response parameters of as-built and damaged states of the structure. first the test structure is described and modal testing procedures are outlined. Next, a damage detection model which yields information on the location of damage directly from changes in mode shapes is outlined. Finally, the damage detection model is implemented to predict the location of damage in the ten structure. From the results, it was found that the damage detection model accurately locates damage in the test structures for which modal parameters of only a single mode are available for pre-damage (as-built) and post-damage stages.

• 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.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.141-154
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• 2023

After an earthquake, information regarding potential damage to buildings close to the epicenter is very important during the initial emergency response. This study proposes the use of crowdsourced measured acceleration response data collected from smartphones located within buildings to perform system identification of building structures during earthquake excitations, and the feasibility of the proposed approach is studied. The principal advantage of using crowdsourced smartphone data is the potential to determine the condition of millions of buildings without incurring hardware, installation, and long-term maintenance costs. This study's goal is to assess the feasibility of identifying the lowest fundamental natural frequencies of buildings without knowing the orientations and precise locations of the crowds' smartphones in advance. Both input-output and output-only identification methods are used to identify the lowest fundamental natural frequencies of numerical finite element models of a real building structure. The effects of time synchronization and the orientation alignment between nearby smartphones on the identification results are discussed, and the proposed approach's performance is verified using large-scale shake table tests of a scaled steel building. The presented results illustrate the potential of using crowdsourced smartphone data with the proposed approach to identify the lowest fundamental natural frequencies of building structures, information that should be valuable in making emergency response decisions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.303-316
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• 2023

Rapid post-earthquake damage estimation of subway stations is particularly necessary to improve short-term crisis management and safety measures of urban subway systems after a destructive earthquake. The conventional Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) framework with constant earthquake occurrence rate is invalid to estimate the aftershock risk because of the time-varying rate of aftershocks and the uncertainty of mainshock-damaged state before the occurrence of aftershocks. This study presents a time-varying probabilistic seismic risk assessment framework for underground structures considering mainshock and aftershock hazards. A discrete non-omogeneous Markov process is adopted to quantify the time-varying nature of aftershock hazard and the uncertainties of structural damage states following mainshock. The time-varying seismic risk of a typical rectangular frame subway station is assessed under mainshock-only (MS) hazard and mainshock-aftershock (MSAS) hazard. The results show that the probabilities of exceeding same limit states over the service life under MSAS hazard are larger than the values under MS hazard. For the same probability of exceedance, the higher response demands are found when aftershocks are considered. As the severity of damage state for the station structure increases, the difference of the probability of exceedance increases when aftershocks are considered. PSDR=1.0% is used as the collapse prevention performance criteria for the subway station is reasonable for both the MS hazard and MSAS hazard. However, if the effect of aftershock hazard is neglected, it can significantly underestimate the response demands and the uncertainties of potential damage states for the subway station over the service life.