• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.233-251
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• 2011

The seismic provisions of the current edition (2005) of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) differ significantly from the earlier edition. The current seismic provisions are based on the uniform hazard spectra corresponding to 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years, as opposed to the seismic hazard level with 10% probablity of exeedance in 50 years used in the earlier edition. Moreover, the current code is presented in an objective-based format where the design is performed based on an acceptable solution. In the light of these changes, an assessment of the expected performance of the buildings designed according to the requirements of the current edition of NBCC would be very useful. In this paper, the seismic performance of a set of six, twelve, and eighteen story buildings of regular geometry and with concrete moment resisting frames, designed for Vancouver western Canada, has been evaluated. Although the effects of non-structural elements are not considered in the design, the non-structural elements connected to the lateral load resisting systems affect the seismic performance of a building. To simulate the non-structural elements, infill panels are included in some frame models. Spectrum compatible artificial ground motion records and scaled actual accelerograms have been used for evaluating the dynamic response. The performance has been evaluated for each building under various levels of seismic hazard with different probabilities of exceedance. From the study it has been observed that, although all the buildings achieved the life-safety performance as assumed in the design provisions of the building code, their performance characteristics are found to be non-uniform.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.179-197
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• 2012

This study presents the findings of the structural health monitoring and the real time system identification of one of the first large scale building instrumentations in Turkey for earthquake safety. Within this context, a thorough review of steps in the instrumentation, monitoring is presented and seismic performance evaluation of structures using both nonlinear pushover and nonlinear dynamic time history analysis is carried out. The sensor locations are determined using the optimal sensor placement techniques used in NASA for on orbit modal identification of large space structures. System identification is carried out via the stochastic subspace technique. The results of the study show that under ambient vibrations, stocky buildings can be substantially stiffer than what is predicted by the finite element models due to the presence of a large number of partitioning walls. However, in a severe earthquake, it will not be safe to rely on this resistance due to the fact that once the partitioning walls crack, the bare frame contributes to the lateral stiffness of the building alone. Consequently, the periods obtained from system identification will be closer to those obtained from the FE analysis. A technique to control the validity of the proportional damping assumption is employed that checks the presence of phase difference in displacements of different stories obtained from band pass filtered records and it is confirmed that the "proportional damping assumption" is valid for this structure. Two different techniques are implemented for identifying the influence of the soil structure interaction. The first technique uses the transfer function between the roof and the basement in both directions. The second technique uses a pre-whitening filter on the data obtained from both the basement and the roof. Subsequently the impulse response function is computed from the scaled cross correlation between the input and the output. The overall results showed that the structure will satisfy the life safety performance level in a future earthquake but some soil structure interaction effects should be expected in the North South direction.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.3 s.49
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• pp.65-75
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• 2006

Nonlinear pushover analysis is used to evaluate the earthquake response of building structures. To accurately predict the inelastic response of a structure, the prescribed story load profile should be able to describe the earthquake force profile which actually occurs during the time-history response of the structure. In the present study, a new modal combination method was developed to predict the earthquake load profiles of building structures. In the proposed method, multiple story load profiles are predicted by combining the modal spectrum responses multiplied by the modal combination factors. Parametric studies were performed far moment-resisting frames and walls. Based on the results. the modal combination factors were determined according to the hierarchy of each mode affecting the dynamic responses of structures. The proposed modal combination method was applied to prototype buildings with and without vertical irregularity. The results showed that the proposed method predicts the actual story load profiles which occur during the time-history responses of the structures.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.65-72
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• 2022

Recently, damage to buildings due to earthquakes in Korea occurred mainly in school buildings and Piloti-type multi-family houses, highlighting the need for seismic retrofit for buildings of the same type. In the early days of the seismic retrofit project for school facilities, various patented methods using dampers as a ductile seismic retrofit method were applied without sufficient verification procedures. However, in 「School Facility Seismic Performance Evaluation and Retrofit Manual, 2021」, when the patented method is applied, it must be applied through a separate strict verification procedure, and instead, the strength/stiffness retrofit method was induced as a general method. In practice,when evaluating seismic performance for retrofit by infilled steel frame with brace, the analysis model is constructed by directly connecting only the steel brace to the existing RC member. However, if the frame is removed from the analysis model of the infilled steel frame with brace, the force reduction occurring on the existing RC member near the retrofit is considered to be very large, and this is judged to affect the review of whether to retrofit the foundation or not. Therefore, in this study, preliminary analysis with variables such as whether or not steel frame is taken into account and frame link method for the analysis model of RC school building retrofitted by infilled steel frame with brace and nonlinear analysis for actual 3-story school building was performed, and basic data for rational analysis model setting were presented by comparing preliminary analysis and pushover analysis results for each variable.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.245-252
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• 2011

Currently, the design guidelines for the prevention of progressive collapse are not available in Korea due to the lack of study efforts in progressive collapse resistance evaluation of RC flat plate system. Therefore, in this study, three types of analysis were conducted to evaluate the progressive collapse resistance of a RC flat plate system. A linear static analysis was carried out by comparing the demand-capacity ratio (DCR) differences of the systems using the alternate load path method, which is the guideline of GSA. A dynamic behavior was investigated by checking the vertical deflection after removal of the column using the linear dynamic analysis. Lastly, a maximum load factor was investigated using the nonlinear static analysis. The finite element (FE) analyses were conducted using various parameters to analyze the results obtained using effective beam width (EB) model and plate element FEM (PF) model. This study results showed that the strength contributions of the slab in the EB models are underestimated compared to those obtained from the PF models. Therefore, a detailed FE analysis considering the slab element is required to thoroughly estimate the progressive collapse resisting capacity of flat plate system. The scenario of the corner column (CC) removal is the most dangerous conditions where as the scenario of the inner column (IC) removal is the least dangerous conditions based on the consideration of various parameters. The analysis results will allow more realistic evaluations of progressive collapse resistance of RC flat plate system.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.381-388
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• 2010

In this study, characteristics of the seismic response of the non-earthquake resistant reinforced concrete (RC) frame were identified. The test building is designed to withstand only gravity loads and not in compliance with modern seismic codes. Smooth bars were utilized for the reinforcement. Members are provided with minimal amount of stirrups to withstand low levels of shear forces and the core concrete is virtually not confined. Columns are slender and more flexible than beams, and beam-column connections were built without stirrups. Through the modeling of an example RC frame, the feasibility of the fiber elementbased 3D nonlinear analysis method was investigated. Since the torsion is governed by the fundamental mode shape of the structure under dynamic loading, pushover analysis cannot predict torsional response accurately. Hence, dynamic response history analysis is a more appropriate analysis method to estimate the response of an asymmetric building. The latter method was shown to be accurate in representing global responses by the comparison of the analytical and experimental results. Analytical models without rigid links provided a good estimation of reduced stiffness and strength of the test structure due to bond-slip, by forming plastic hinges closer to the column ends. However, the absence of a proper model to represent the bond-slip poased the limitations on the current inelastic analysis schemes for the seismic analysis of buildings especially for those with round steel reinforcements. Thus, development of the appropriate bond-slip model is in need to achieve more accurate analysis.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.13-21
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• 2017

Recent seismic events occurred in Italy (Emilia-Romagna 2012, Abruzzo 2009) and worldwide (New Zealand 2010 and 2011) highlighted some of the weaknesses of precast concrete industrial buildings, especially those related to the connecting systems traditionally employed to fasten the cladding panels to the internal framing. In fact, one of the most commons fails it is possible to observe in such structural typologies is related to the out-of-plane collapse of the external walls due to the unsatisfactory behaviour of the connectors used to join the panels to the perimeter beams. In this work, the strengthening of a traditional industrial building, assumed as a case study, made by precast reinforced concrete is proposed by the adoption of a dual system allowing the reinforcement of the structure by acting both internally; by pendular columns and, externally, on the walls. In particular, traditional connections at the top of the walls are substituted by devices able to work as a slider with vertical axis while, the bottom of the walls is equipped with two or more hysteretic dampers working on the uplift of the cladding panels occurring under seismic actions. By means of this approach, the structure is stiffened; obtaining a reduction of the lateral drifts under serviceability limit states. In addition, its seismic behaviour is improved due to the additional source of energy dissipation represented by the dampers located at the base of the walls. The effectiveness of the suggested retrofitting approach has been checked by comparing the performance of the retrofitted structure with those of the structure unreinforced by means of both pushover and Incremental Dynamic Analyses (IDA) in terms of behaviour factor, assumed as a measure of the ductility capacity of the structure.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.365-374
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• 2017

With the continuous evolution of the numerical methods and the availability of advanced constitutive models, it became a common practice to use complex physical and geometrical nonlinear numerical analyses to estimate the structural behavior of reinforced concrete elements. Such simulations may yield the complete time history of the structural behavior, from the first moment the load is applied until the total collapse of the structure. However, the evolution of the cracking pattern in geometrical discontinuous zones of reinforced concrete elements and the associated failure modes are relatively complex phenomena and their numerical simulation is considerably challenging. The objective of the present paper is to assess the applicability of the Applied Element Method in simulating the development of distinct failure modes in reinforced concrete walls subjected to monotonic loading obtained in experimental tests. A pushover test was simulated numerically on three distinct RC shear walls, all presenting an opening that guarantee a geometrical discontinuity zone and, consequently, a relatively complex cracking pattern. The presence of different reinforcement solutions in each wall enables the assessment of the reliability of the computational model for distinct failure modes. Comparison with available experimental tests allows concluding on the advantages and the limitations of the Applied Element Method when used to estimate the behavior of reinforced concrete elements subjected to monotonic loading.

• Magazine of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.116-123
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• 2001

This paper represents results of an effort to seismically rehabilitate a 12-story nonductile reinforced concrete frame building. The frame located in the most severe seismic area, zone 4, is assumed to be designed and detailed for gravity load requirements only. Both pushover and nonlinear time-history analyses are carried out to determine strength, deformation capacity and the vulnerability of the building. The analysis indicates a drift concentration at the $1^{st}$ floor level due to inadequate strength and ductility capacity of the ground floor columns. The capacity curve of the structure, when superimposed on the average demand response spectrum for the ensemble of scaled earthquakes indicates that the structure is extremely weak and requires a major retrofit. The retrofit of the building is attempted using viscoelastic (VE) dampers. The dampers at each floor level are sized in order to reduce the elastic story drift ratios to within 1%. It is found that this requires substantially large dampers that are not practically feasible. With practical size dampers, the analyses of the viscoelastically damped building indicates that the damper sizes provided are not sufficient enough to remove the biased response and drift concentration of the building. The results indicate that VE-dampers alone are not sufficient to rehabilitate such a concrete frame. Concrete buildings, in general, being stiffer require larger dampers. The second rehabilitation strategy uses concrete shearwalls. Shearwalls increased stiffness and strength of the building, which resulted in reducing the drift significantly. The effectiveness of VE-dampers in conjunction with stiff shearwalls was also studied. Considering the economy and effectiveness, it is concluded that shearwalls were the most feasible solution for seismic rehabilitation of such buildings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.171-180
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• 2014

Since the execution of structural design by professional structural engineers is not mandatory for small-size buildings in Korea, structural design is conducted by architects or contractors resulting in concern about the seismic safety of the buildings. Therefore, the Korean Structural Engineers Association proposed dedicated structural design criteria in 2012. The criteria were developed based on a deterministic approach in which the structural members are designed only with information of story and span length of the buildings and without structural analyses. However, due to the short time devoted to their development, these criteria miss satisfactory basis and do not deal with structural walls popularly used in Korea. Accordingly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport launched a research on the 'development of structural performance enhancement technologies for small-size buildings against earthquakes and climate changes'.. As part of this research, this paper intends to establish direction for the preparation of deterministic structural design guidelines for seismic safety of domestic small-size reinforced concrete buildings. To that goal, a typical plan of these buildings is selected considering frames only and frames plus walls, and then design is conducted by changing the number of stories and span length. Next, the seismic performance is analyzed by nonlinear static pushover analysis. The results show that the structural design guidelines should be developed by classifying frames only and frames plus walls. The size and reinforcement of structural elements should be provided in the middle level of the current Korean Building Code and criteria for small buildings by considering story and span length for buildings with frames only, and determined by considering the shape and location of walls and the story and span length as well for buildings with frames plus walls. It is recommended that the design of walls should be conducted by reducing the amount of walls along with symmetrically located walls.