• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.68-74
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• 2017

To predict the damage of Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures from mass explosion, Pressure-Impulse (P-I) curves representing the relationship between peak pressure and impulse based on damage criteria are essential. There are P-I curves developed by the U.S. DoD without detailed explanation regarding validation. In this study, full scale explosion tests were conducted measuring response of RC slab to modify and validate pre-existing P-I curves. Four same RC slabs were prepared, and placed at different distances, which are fixed to steel frame with concrete base. Scaled distances were selected to show different failure types using P-I curve based on Single Degree Of Freedom (SDOF) model. It was found that SDOF model can be used to evaluate and identify one-way RC slab damage with difference damage criteria.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.381-397
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• 2015

Connections are the most important regions in a structural system especially for buildings in seismic zones. In R.C. structures due to large dimensions of members and lack of cognition of the stress distribution in a connection, reaching a comprehensive understanding of the connection behaviors becomes more complicated. The shear wall-to-floor slab connections in lateral load resisting systems have a potential weakness in transferring loads from slabs to shear walls which might change the path of load transformation to shear walls. This paper tries to investigate the effects of seismic load combinations on the behavior of slabs at their connection zones with the shear walls. These connection zones naturally are the most critical regions of the slabs in RC buildings. The investigation carried on in a simulated environment by considering three different structures with different shear wall layout. The final results of our study reveal that layout of shear walls in a building significantly affects the magnification of forces developed at the shear wall-floor slab connections.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.72-78
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• 2014

The minimum thickness of long-span deck slab is proposed by checking the limit state according to the Korean highway bridge design code(limit state design). Both minimizing thickness and ensuring safety of deck slab are important design factors to increase a competitive price of the long span deck slabs. The required thicknesses for satisfying flexural capacity, preventing punching shear failure and limiting deflection were calculated by considering KL-510 load model which has increased total load compared to DB 24 from 432 kN to 510 kN. The results of the required thickness for various limit states were compared to propose the minimum thickness as a function of span length of deck slabs. The proposed minimum thickness is influenced by satisfying flexural capacity and limiting deflection. It turns out to be similar compared to the results of the previous study by ultimate strength design method even if the live load model was increased in total weights.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.333-346
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• 2019

Foam ceramic materials contribute to the explosion effect weakening on concrete structures, due to the corresponding excellent energy absorption ability. The blast resistance of concrete members could be improved through steel-foam ceramics as protective cladding layers. An approach for the modeling of dynamic response of steel-foam ceramic protected reinforced concrete (Steel-FC-RC) slabs under blast loading was presented with the LS-DYNA software. The orthogonal analysis (five factors with five levels) under three degrees of blast loads was conducted. The influence rankings and trend laws were further analyzed. The dynamic displacement of the slab bottom was significantly reduced by increasing the thickness of steel plate, foam ceramic and RC slab, while the displacement decreased slightly as the steel yield strength and the compressive strength of concrete increased. However, the optimized efficiency of blast resistance decreases with factors increase to higher level. Moreover, an efficient design method was reported based on the orthogonal analysis.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.311-327
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• 2015

Employing discrete elements for considering bond-slip effects in reinforced concrete structures is very time consuming. In this study, a new modified embedded element method is used to consider the bond-slip phenomenon in structural behavior of reinforced concrete structures. A comprehensive parametric study of RC slabs is performed to determine influence of different variables on structural behavior. The parametric study includes a set of simple models accompanied with complex models such as multi-storey buildings. The procedure includes the decrease in the effective stiffness of steel bar in the layered model. Validation of the proposed model with existing experimental results demonstrates that the model is capable of considering the bond-slip effects in embedded elements. Results demonstrate the significant effect of bond-slip on total behavior of structural members. Concrete characteristic strengths, steel yield stress, bar diameter, concrete coverage and reinforcement ratios are the parameters considered in the parametric study. Results revealed that the overall behavior of slab is significantly affected by bar diameter compared with other parameters. Variation of steel yield stress has insignificant impact in static response of RC slabs; however, its effect in cyclic behavior is important.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.545-558
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• 2008

The corrosion of RC structures demonstrates very complicated forms of deterioration intermingled together but all pointing to a decrease in the durability of RC structures due to the corrosion of reinforcing bars. Until now, nondestructive techniques, such as half-cell potential and polarization resistance, have been widely available in the world. The former provides information on the probability of corrosion while the latter is associated with information concerning corrosion rates. Inversion by the boundary element method (IBEM) was developed for considering concrete resistivity. The applicability of the procedure was examined through a numerical analysis and electrolytic tests for RC slabs. A distribution in such concrete resistivity is relatively inhomogeneous including cracks on the surface of slabs. Regarding cracks in concrete, the relative coefficient of concrete resistance was introduced to perform its analysis. Further, the procedure will be developed to identify the corroded region visually using 3-D VRML.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.217-233
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• 2019

This paper describes the numerical modelling of an interior slab-column connection to investigate the punching shear resistance of reinforced concrete (RC) slabs under fire conditions. Parameters of the study were the fire direction, flexural reinforcement ratio, load levels, shear reinforcement and compressive strength of concrete. Moreover, the efficiency of the insulating material, gypsum, in reducing the heat transferred to the slab was assessed. Validation studies were conducted comparing the simulation results to experiments from the literature and common codes of practice. Temperature dependencies of both concrete and reinforcing steel bars were considered in thermo-mechanical analyses. Results showed that there is a slight difference in temperature endurance of various models with respect to concrete with different compressive strengths. It was also concluded that compared to a slab without gypsum, 10-mm and 20-mm thick gypsum reduce the maximum heat transferred to the slab by 45.8% and 70%, respectively. Finally, it was observed that increasing the flexural reinforcement ratio changes the failure mode from flexural punching to brittle punching in most cases.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.17 no.5 s.89
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• pp.761-768
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• 2005

Lately outmoded and functionally obsolete buildings constructed in 1960s and 1970s are often remodelled and restored. Even though there are not serious structural defects in the existing buildings, many old buildings have been reconstructed to improve residence quality or to extend residence area of the buildings. The experimental or theoretical research on plane expansion of RC apartments is quite scare. In this research, 12 specimens and 19 RC slabs connected by hinged joints were tested. The new slab was connected to the existing slab by hinge joints injecting dowel bars between two slabs. Main parameters of the slabs are types of the dowel bars (D13 and D19), spacing of the dowel bars (150mm, 300mm, and 450mm), and the locations of the steel bars in the existing slabs. The test results indicated that the shear strength of the RC test slabs having various types of dowel bars was about twice that calculated by the ACI 318-02 code. All slabs failed in concrete spatting and the dowel steel bars did not reach their yield strengths.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.789-830
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• 2015

The recent re-assessment of the seismic hazard in Europe led for many regions of low to moderate seismicity to an increase in the seismic demand. As a consequence, several modern unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings, constructed with reinforced concrete (RC) slabs that provide an efficient rigid diaphragm action, no longer satisfy the seismic design check and have been retrofitted by adding or replacing URM walls with RC walls. Of late, also several new construction projects have been conceived directly as buildings with both RC and URM walls. Despite the widespread use of such construction technique, very little is known about the seismic behaviour of mixed RC-URM wall structures and codes do not provide adequate support to designers. The aim of the paper is therefore to propose a displacement-based design methodology for the design of mixed RC-URM edifices and the retrofit of URM buildings by replacing or adding selected URM walls with RC ones. The article describes also two tools developed for estimating important quantities relevant for the displacement-based design of structures with both RC and URM walls. The tools are (i) a mechanical model based on the shear-flexure interaction between URM and RC walls and (ii) an elastic model for estimating the contribution of the RC slabs to the overturning moment capacity of the system. In the last part of the article the proposed design method is verified through nonlinear dynamic analyses of several case studies. These results show that the proposed design approach has the ability of controlling the displacement profile of the designed structures, avoiding concentration of deformations in one single storey, a typical feature of URM wall structures.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.689-704
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• 2017

The paper presents experimental and numerical investigations of prefabricated composite structural building reinforced concrete slabs with the insulating material for a residential building construction. The building slabs were composed of concrete and expanded polystyrene. In experiments, the slabs in the full-scale 1:1 were subjected to vertical concentrated loads and failed along a diagonal shear crack. The experiments were numerically evaluated using the finite element method based on two different constitutive continuum models for concrete. First, an elasto-plastic model with the Drucker-Prager criterion defined in compression and with the Rankine criterion defined in tension was used. Second, a coupled elasto-plastic-damage formulation based on the strain equivalence hypothesis was used. In order to describe strain localization in concrete, both models were enhanced in the softening regime by a characteristic length of micro-structure by means of a non-local theory. Attention was paid to the formation of critical diagonal shear crack which was a failure precursor.