• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2020

This study is to investigate the effect of a retrofitted reinforced concrete frame with non-seismic details strengthened by embedded steel moment frames with an indirect joint, which mitigates the problems of the direct joint method. First, full-scale experiments were conducted to confirm the structural behavior of a 2-story reinforced concrete frame with non-seismic details and strengthened by a steel moment frame with an indirect joint. The reinforced concrete frame with non-seismic details showed a maximum strength of 185 kN at an overall drift ratio of 1.75%. The flexural-shear failure of columns was governed, and shear cracks were concentrated at the beam-column joints. The reinforced concrete frame strengthened by the embedded steel moment frames achieved a maximum strength of 701 kN at an overall drift ratio of 1.5% so that the maximum strength was about 3.8 times that of the specimen with non-seismic details. The failure pattern of the retrofitted specimen was the loss of bond strength between the concrete and the rebars of the columns caused by a prying action of the bottom indirect joint because of lateral force. Furthermore, methods are proposed for calculation of the specified strength of the reinforced concrete frame with non-seismic details and strengthened by the steel moment frame with the indirect joint.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.359-374
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• 2017

The seismic events in Northern Italy, May 2012, have revealed the seismic vulnerability of typical Italian precast industrial buildings. The aim of this paper is to present a seismic fragility model for Italian RC precast buildings, to be used in earthquake loss estimation and seismic risk assessment by comparing two building typologies and three different codes: D.M. 3-03-1975, D.M. 16-01-1996 and current Italian building code that has been released in 2008. Based on geometric characteristics and design procedure applied, ten different building classes were identified. A Monte Carlo simulation was performed for each building class in order to generate the building stock used for the development of fragility curves trough analytical method. The probabilistic distributions of geometry were mainly obtained from data collected from 650 field surveys, while the material properties were deduced from the code in place at the time of construction or from expert opinion. The structures were modelled in 2D frameworks; since the past seismic events have identified the beam-column connection as the weakest element of precast buildings, two different modelling solutions were adopted to develop fragility curves: a simple model with post processing required to detect connection collapse and an innovative modelling solution able to reproduce the real behaviour of the connection during the analysis. Fragility curves were derived using both nonlinear static and dynamic analysis.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.99-123
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• 2015

In this study, structural vulnerability of reinforced concrete moment resisting frames (RC-MRFs) by considering the Iran-specific characteristics is investigated to manage the earthquake risk in terms of multicomponent seismic excitations. Low and medium rise RC-MRFs, which constitute approximately 80-90% of the total buildings stock in Iran, are focused in this fragility-based assessment. The seismic design of 3-12 story RC-MRFs are carried out according to the Iranian Code of Practice for Seismic Resistant Design of Buildings (Standard No. 2800), and the analytical models are formed accordingly in open source nonlinear platforms. Frame structures are categorized in three subclasses according to the specific characteristics of construction practice and the observed seismic performance after major earthquakes in Iran. Both far and near fields' ground motions have been considered in the fragility estimation. An optimal intensity measure (IM) called Sa, avg and beta probability distribution were used to obtain reliable fragility-based database for earthquake damage and loss estimation of RC buildings stock in urban areas of Iran. Nonlinear incremental dynamic analyses by means of lumped-parameter based structural models have been simulated and performed to extract the fragility curves. Approximate confidence bounds are developed to represent the epistemic uncertainties inherent in the fragility estimations. Consequently, it's shown that including vertical ground motion in the analysis is highly recommended for reliable seismic assessment of RC buildings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.181-186
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• 2013

The construction costs for nonstructural systems such as mechanical/electrical equipment, ceiling system, and piping system occupy a significant proportion of the total cost. These nonstructural systems can also cause considerable economic losses and loss of life during and after an earthquake. Therefore, reduction of seismic risk of nonstructural components has been emerging as a key aspect of research in recent year. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the seismic performance of a single-story and multi-story piping system installed in low-rise building and to identify the seismic vulnerability of the current piping systems. The seismic performance evaluation of the piping systems was conducted with 5 different earthquakes to account for the ground motion uncertainty and the preliminary results demonstrated that the maximum displacements of each floor in the multi-story piping system increased linearly with increasing floor level in the building system. This study revealed that the current design piping systems are significantly sensitive to the effect of floor height, which stress the necessity to improve the seismic performance of the current piping systems by, for example, strengthening with seismic sway bracing using transverse/longitudinal bracing cables or hangers.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.455-463
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• 2020

Road facilities with a service life of more than 30 years are expected to triple in the next ten years. The seismic performance of road facilities should be reviewed with consideration of the "Common Application of Seismic Design Standards" issued by Korea's Ministry of Public Administration and Security in 2017. These standards should be applied to all existing road facilities, including retrofitted or seismic-designed facilities, for evaluating seismic performance. In order to manage seismic performance for a large number of facilities, decision-support technology that can provide economic and reliable results is needed. However, the indices method currently used in Korea is a deterministic method, and the seismic performance of individual facilities is evaluated based on qualitative indices so that only retrofitting among road facilities is prioritized. In turn, with the indices method, it is difficult to support decisions other than the decision to prioritize retrofitting. Therefore, it is necessary to use the seismic risk assessment method to overcome such shortcomings and provide useful information such as direct loss, indirect socio-economic loss, and benefit of the investment.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2017

The safety analysis of an earthquake is carried out during the operation of a subsea pipeline and an onshore pipeline. Several cases are proposed for consideration. In the case of a buried pipeline, permanent ground deformation by the earthquake and an increase of internal pressure by the acceleration of the earthquake should be considered. In the case of a subsea pipeline, a bending moment is caused by liquefaction of the backfill material on a trenched seabed, etc., which results in a high bending moment of the buried pipeline. The bending moment causes the collapse of the subsea pipeline or a leak of crude oil or gas, which results in economic loss due to enormous environmental contamination and social economic loss owing to operation functional failure. Thus, in order to prevent economic loss and operation loss, structurally sensitive design with regard to seismic characteristics must be performed in the buried pipeline in advance, and the negative impact on the buried pipeline must be minimized by conducting a thorough analysis on the seabed and backfilling material selection. Moreover, it is proposed to consider the selection of material properties for the buried pipeline. A more economical review is also required for detailed study.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.329-348
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• 2013

This study aims at observing the coupling behaviours between suspended ceilings and partition walls in terms of their global seismic performance using full-scale shake table tests. The suspended ceilings with planar dimensions of $6.0m{\times}3.6m$ were tested with two types of panels: acoustic lay-in and metal clip-on panels. They were further categorized as seismic-braced, seismic-unbraced, and non-seismic installations. Also, two configurations of 2.7 m high partition wall specimens, with C-shape and I-shape in the plane layouts, were tested. In total, seven ceiling-partition-coupling (CPC) specimens were tested utilizing a unidirectional seismic simulator. The test results indicate that the damage patterns of the tested CPC systems included failure of the ceiling grids, shearing-off of the wall top railing, and, most destructively, numerous partial detachments and falling of the ceiling panels. The loss of panels was mostly concentrated near the center of the tested partition wall. The testing results also confirmed that the failure mode of the non-seismic CPC systems was brittle: The whole system would collapse suddenly all at once when the magnitude of the inputs hit the capacity threshold, rather than displaying progressive damage. Overall, the seismic capacity of the unbraced and braced CPC systems could be up to 1.23 g and 2.67 g, respectively; these accelerations were both achieved at the base of the partition wall. Nonetheless, for practical applications, it is noteworthy that the three-dimensional nature of seismic excitations and the size effect of the ceiling area are parameters that exacerbate the CPC's seismic response so that their actual capacity may be dramatically decreased, leading to important losses even in moderate seismic events.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.847-867
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• 2014

There are continuous efforts to mitigate structural losses from earthquakes and manage risk through seismic risk assessment; seismic fragility curves are widely accepted as an essential tool of such efforts. Seismic fragility curves can be classified into four groups based on how they are derived: empirical, judgmental, analytical, and hybrid. Analytical fragility curves are the most widely used and can be further categorized into two subgroups, depending on whether an analytical function or simulation method is used. Although both methods have shown decent performances for many seismic fragility problems, they often oversimplify the given problems in reliability or structural analyses owing to their built-in assumptions. In this paper, a new method is proposed for the development of seismic fragility curves. Integration with sophisticated software packages for reliability analysis (FERUM) and structural analysis (ZEUS-NL) allows the new method to obtain more accurate seismic fragility curves for less computational cost. Because the proposed method performs reliability analysis using the first-order reliability method, it provides component probabilities as well as useful byproducts and allows further fragility analysis at the system level. The new method was applied to a numerical example of a 2D frame structure, and the results were compared with those by Monte Carlo simulation. The method was found to generate seismic fragility curves more accurately and efficiently. Also, the effect of system reliability analysis on the development of seismic fragility curves was investigated using the given numerical example and its necessity was discussed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.925-942
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• 2016

With ongoing development of earthquake engineering research and the lessons learnt from a series of strong earthquakes, the seismic design concept of "resilience" has received much attention. Resilience describes the capability of a structure or a city to recover rapidly after earthquakes or other disasters. As one of the main features of urban constructions, tall buildings have greater impact on the sustainability and resilience of major cities. Therefore, it is important and timely to quantify their seismic resilience. In this work, a quantitative comparison of the seismic resilience of two tall buildings designed according to the Chinese and US seismic design codes was conducted. The prototype building, originally designed according to the US code as part of the Tall Building Initiative (TBI) Project, was redesigned in this work according to the Chinese codes under the same design conditions. Two refined nonlinear finite element (FE) models were established for both cases and their seismic responses were evaluated at different earthquake intensities, including the service level earthquake (SLE), the design-based earthquake (DBE) and the maximum considered earthquake (MCE). In addition, the collapse fragility functions of these two building models were established through incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). Based on the numerical results, the seismic resilience of both models was quantified and compared using the new-generation seismic performance assessment method proposed by FEMA P-58. The outcomes of this study indicate that the seismic resilience of the building according to the Chinese design is slightly better than that according to the US design. The conclusions drawn from this research are expected to guide further in-depth studies on improving the seismic resilience of tall buildings.

• 한국방재학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.02a
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• pp.269-272
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• 2008

The seismic fragility curves of a structure represents the probability of exceeding the prescribed structural damage given various levels of ground motion intensityand the seismic fragility curve is essential to evaluation of structural performance and assessment of risk and loss of structures. The purpose of this paper is to develop seismic fragility functions for bridge structures in Koreaby reviewing those of advanced countries. Therefore, at first, we investigated development conditions of the seismic fragility functions. And the next highway bridges in Korea are classified into a number of categories and several typical bridges are selected to estimate seismic fragilities for using this analysis method in Korea. Finally, fragility curves for PSC Box girder bridge are estimated. The results show that the bridge classification and damage state play an important role in estimation of seismic damage and seismic fragility analysis for bridge structures.