• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.625-635
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• 2022

High-rise buildings (HRBs) are considered one of the most common structures nowadays due to the population growth, especially in crowded towns. The lack of land in crowded cities has led to the convergence of the HRBs and the absence of any gaps between them, especially in lands with weak soil (e.g., liquefaction-prone soil), but then during earthquakes, these structures may be exposed to the risk of collision between them due to the large increase in the horizontal displacements, which may be destructive in some cases to the one or both of these adjacent buildings. To evaluate methods of reducing the risk of collision between adjacent twin HRBs, this research investigates three vibration control methods to reduce the risk of collision due to five different earthquakes for the case of two adjacent reinforced concrete (RC) twin high-rise buildings of 15 floors height without gap distance between them, founded on raft foundation supported on piles inside a liquefaction-prone soil. Contact pounding elements between the two buildings (distributed at all floor levels and at the raft foundation level) are used to make the impact strength between the two buildings realistic. The mitigation methods investigated are the base isolation, the tuned mass damper (TMD) method (using traditional TMDs), and the pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) method (using PTMDs connected between the two buildings). The results show that the PTMD method between the two adjacent RC twin high-rise buildings is more efficient than the other two methods in mitigating the earthquake-induced pounding risk.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제26권3호
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• pp.203-211
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• 2020

Turkey is located in one of the most seismically active regions of in Europe. The majority of the population living in big cities are at high seismic risk due to insufficient structural resistance of the existing buildings. Such a seismic risk brings the need for a comprehensive seismic evaluation based on the risk analysis in Turkey. Determining the seismic resistance level of existing building stock against the earthquakes is the first step to reduce the damages in a possible earthquake. Recently in January 2020, the Elazig earthquake brought the importance of the issue again in the public. However, the excessive amount of building stock, labor, and resource problems made the implementation phase almost impossible and revealed the necessity to carry out alternative studies on this issue. This study aims for a detailed investigation of residential buildings in Antalya, Turkey. The approach proposed here can be considered an improved state of building survey methods previously identified in Turkey's Design Code. Antalya, Turkey's fifth most populous city, with a population over 2.5 Million, was investigated as divided into sub-regions to understand the vulnerability, and a threshold value found for the study area. In this study, 26,610 reinforced concrete buildings between 1 to 7 stories in Antalya were examined by using the rapid visual assessment method. A specific threshold value for the city of Antalya was determined with the second level examination and statistical methods carried out in the determined sub-region. With the micro zonation process, regions below the threshold value are defined as the priority areas that need to be examined in detail. The developed methodology can be easily calibrated for application in other cities and can be used to determine new threshold values for those cities.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제90권3호
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• pp.313-323
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• 2024

Most of existing buildings in Mexico City are made of reinforced concrete (RC), however, it has been shown that they are very susceptible to narrow-band long duration ground motions. In recent years, the use of dual systems composed by Buckling Restrained Braces (BRB) has increased due to its high energy dissipation capacity under reversible cyclical loads. Therefore, in this work the behavior of RC buildings with BRB is studied in order to know their performance, specifically, the energy distribution through height and response transformation factors between the RC and simplified systems are estimated. For this propose, seven RC buildings with different heights were designed according to the Mexico City Seismic Design Provisions (MCSDP), in addition, equivalent single degree of freedom (SDOF) systems were obtained. Incremental dynamic analyses on the buildings under 30 narrow-band ground motions in order to compute the relationship between normalized hysteretic energy, maximum inter-story drift and roof displacement demands were performed. The results shown that the entire structural frames participate in energy dissipation and their distribution is independent of the global ductility. The results let propose energy distribution equations through height. Finally, response transformation factors between the SDOF and multi degree of freedom (MDOF) systems were developed aimed to propose a new energy-based approach of BRB reinforced concrete buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제5권4호
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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.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제8권6호
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• pp.693-715
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• 2011

The main object of this study is to evaluate the seismic response effects on a reinforced concrete building isolated by triple concave friction pendulum (TCFP) bearings. The site-response effects arise from the difference in the local soil conditions at the support points of the buildings. The local soil conditions are, therefore, considered as soft, medium and firm; separately. The results on the responses of the isolated building are compared with those of the non-isolated. The building model used in the time history analysis, which is a two-dimensional and eight-storey reinforced concrete building with and without the seismic isolation bearings and/or the local soil conditions, is composed of two-dimensional moment resisting frames for superstructure and of plane elements featuring plane-stress for substructure. The TCFP bearings for isolating the building are modelled as of a series arrangement of the three single concave friction pendulum (SCFP) bearings. In order to investigate the efficiency of both the seismic isolation bearings and the site-response effects on the buildings, the time history analyses are elaborately conducted. It is noted that the site-response effects are important for the isolated building constructed on soft, medium or firm type local foundation soil. The results of the analysis demonstrate that the site-response has significant effects on the response values of the structure-seismic isolation-foundation soil system.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.305-312
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• 2018

Significant research efforts were undertaken to evaluate seismic performance of vertically irregular buildings on flat ground. However, there is scarcity of study on seismic performance of buildings on hill slopes. The present study attempts to investigate seismic behaviour of reinforced concrete irregular stepback building frames with different configurations on sloping ground. Based on extensive regression study of free vibration results of four hundred seventeen frames with varying ground slope, number of story and span number, a modification is proposed to the code based empirical fundamental time period estimation formula. The modification to the fundamental time period estimation formula is a simplified function of ground slope and a newly introduced equivalent height parameter to reflect the effect of stiffness and mass irregularity. The derived empirical formula is successfully validated with various combinations of slope and framing configurations of buildings. The correlation between the predicted and the actual time period obtained from the free vibration analysis results are in good agreement. The various statistical parameters e.g., the root mean square error, coefficient of determination, standard average error generally used for validation of such regression equations also ensure the prediction capability of the proposed empirical relation with reasonable accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제57권4호
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• pp.641-656
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• 2016

Reinforced concrete frame buildings with masonry infill walls are one of the most popular structural systems in the world. In most cases, the effects of masonry infill walls are not considered in structural models. The results of earthquakes show that infill walls have a significant effect on the seismic response of buildings. In some cases, the buildings collapsed as a result of the formation of a soft story. This study developed a simple method, called corner opening, by replacing the corner of infill walls with a very flexible material to enhance the structural behavior of walls. To evaluate the proposed method a series of experiments were conducted on masonry infill wall and reinforced concrete frames with and without corner openings. Two 1:4 scale masonry infill walls with and without corner openings were tested under diagonal tension or shear strength and two RC frames with full infill walls and with corner opening infill walls were tested under monotonic horizontal loading up to a drift level of 2.5%. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method reduced the strength of infill wall specimens but considerably enhanced the ductility of infill wall specimens in the diagonal tension test. Moreover, the corner opening in infill walls prevented the slid shear failure of the infill wall in RC frames with infill walls.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.261-280
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• 2014

In many parts of the world, reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, designed and built in accordance with older codes, have suffered severe damage or even collapse as a result of recent near-fault earthquakes. This is particularly due to the deficiencies of most of the older (and even some of the recent) codes in dealing with near fault events. In this study, a tested three-storey frame designed for gravity loads only was selected to represent those deficient buildings. Nonlinear time history analyses were performed, followed by damage assessment procedures. The results were compared with experimental observation of the same frame showing a good match. Damage and fragility analyses of the frame subjected to 204 pulse-type motions were then performed using a selected damage model and inter-storey drifts. The results showed that the frame located in near-fault regions is extremely vulnerable to ground motions. The results also showed that the damage model better captures the damage distribution in the frame than inter-storey drifts. The first storey was identified as the most fragile and the inner columns of the first storey suffered most damage as indicated by the damage index. The findings would be helpful in the decision making process prior to the strengthening of buildings in near-fault regions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제82권1호
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• pp.55-67
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• 2022

The precast reinforced concrete frame system is a method for industrialization of construction. However, the seismic performance factor of this structural system is not explicitly clarified in some existing building codes. In this paper, the seismic performance factor for the existing precast concrete building frame systems with cast-in-situ reinforced shear walls were evaluated. Nonlinear behavior of the precast beam-column joints and cast-in-situ reinforced shear walls were considered in the modeling of the structures. The ATC-19's coefficient method was used for calculating the seismic performance factor and the FEMA P-695's approach was adopted for evaluating the accuracy of the computed seismic performance factor. The results showed that the over-strength factor varies from 2 to 2.63 and the seismic performance factor (R factor) varies from 5.1 to 8.95 concerning the height of the structure. Also, it was proved that all of the examined buildings have adequate safety against the collapse at the MCE level of earthquake, so the validity of R factors was confirmed. The obtained incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) results indicated that the minimum adjusted collapse margin ratio (ACMR) of the precast buildings representing the seismic vulnerability of the structures approximately equaled to 2.7, and pass the requirements of FEMA P-695.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제25권2호
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• pp.99-112
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• 2023

This paper investigates the influences of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) on the seismic behavior of two-dimensional reinforced concrete moment-resisting frames subjected to Far-Field Ground Motion (FFGM) and Near-Field Ground Motion (NFGM). For this purpose, the nonlinear modeling of 7, 10, and 15-story reinforced concrete moment resisting frames were developed in Open Systems for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OpenSees) software. Effects of SSI were studied by simulating Beam on Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) and the soil type as homogenous medium-dense. Generally, the building resistance to seismic loads can be explained in terms of Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA); therefore, IDA curves are presented in this study. For comparison, the fragility evaluation is subjected to NFGM and FFGM as proposed by Quantification of Building Seismic Performance Factors (FEMA P-695). The seismic performance of Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings with fixed and flexible foundations was evaluated to assess the probability of collapse. The results of this paper demonstrate that SSI and NFGM have significantly influenced the probability of failure of the RC frames. In particular, the flexible-base RC buildings experience higher Spectral acceleration (Sa) compared to the fixed-base ones subjected to FFGM and NFGM.