• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.421-437
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• 2024

The soil nailing method entails the utilisation of nails to reinforce and stabilise a zone of soil mass. This is widely used for various applications due to its effective performance under various loading conditions. The seismic response of 6m high vertical soil-nailed cut in various site classes under dynamic excitations has been investigated in this study considering various lengths and inclinations of nails. The influence of frequency content of dynamic excitation on the response of structure has been assessed through finite element analysis using time history data of three different earthquakes. The seismic stability of the nailed cut in retaining soil in various sites under El Centro, Kobe and Trinidad earthquake ground motion is evaluated based on maximum acceleration response, maximum horizontal deformation, earth pressure distribution on the wall and maximum axial force mobilised in nails. The optimum nail inclination is identified as 15° and a minimum nail length ratio of 0.7 is essential for a stable vertical cut under dynamic excitations.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.712-722
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• 2020

Purpose: The damage from earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater Korea has increased in South Korea. When a earthquake occurs, internal facilities and electric equipment besides urban structures will be damaged. Thus, in this paper, an earthquake-induced seismic isolation device with double slip fiction surfaces which can reduce the damage of electric power equipment such as distribution panel and then the seismic performance was evaluated. Method: To evaluate the seismic performance shaking table test was performed, a seismic performance comparison was performed according to the presence or absence of a seismic isolation device. The attenuation effect of the seismic isolation device are analyzed by comparing response acceleration and displacement for different frequencies and acceleration levels. Result: As a result of the test, the acceleration amplification was up to 42% less than when the seismic isolation device was installed in comparison to the other case without the seismic device. This is believed that the amplification energy has reduced because the displacement between the double slip friction surfaces of the seismic device play a role in dissipating the seismic energy. Conclusion: The seismic device with double slip friction surfaces has a greater earthquake attenuation effect in strong earthquakes than in weak ones, so the greater the frequency, the better the earthquake attenuation effect. Therefore, it is judged that earthquake energy can be decreased by applying to electric equipment such as distribution panels.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.441-457
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• 2018

Characteristic parameter values of seismic isolators deviate from their nominal design values due to uncertainties and/or errors in their material properties and element dimensions, etc. Deviations may increase over service life due to environmental effects and service conditions. For accurate evaluation of the seismic safety level, all such effects, which would result in deviations in the structural response, need to be taken into account. In this study, the sensitivity of the probability of failure of the structures equipped with nonlinear base isolation systems to the uncertainties in various isolation system characteristic parameters is investigated in terms of various isolation system and superstructure response parameters in the context of a realistic three-dimensional base-isolated building model via Monte Carlo Simulations. The inherent record-to-record variability nature of the earthquake ground motions is also taken into account by carrying out analyses for a large number of ground motion records which are classified as those with and without forward-directivity effects. Two levels of nominal isolation periods each with three different levels of uncertainty are considered. Comparative plots of cumulative distribution functions and related statistical evaluation presented here portray the potential extent of the deviation of the structural response parameters resulting from the uncertainties and the uncertainty levels considered, which is expected to be useful for practicing engineers in evaluating isolator test results for their projects.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.17-29
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• 2017

The seismic performance of steel beam to concrete-encased composite column with unsymmetrical steel section joints is investigated and reported within this paper. Experimental and analytical evaluation were conducted on a total of 8 specimens with T-shaped and L-shaped steel section under lateral cyclic loading and axial compression. The test parameters included concrete strength, stirrup ratio and axial compression ratio. The response of the specimens was presented in terms of their hysterisis loop behavior, stress distribution, joint shear strength, and performance degradation. The experiment indicated good structural behavior and good seismic performance. In addition, a three-dimensional nonlinear finite-element analysis simulating was conducted to simulate their seismic behaviors. The finite-element analysis incorporated both bond-slip relationship and crack interface interaction between steel and concrete. The results were also compared with the test data, and the analytical prediction of joint shear strength was satisfactory for both joints with T-shaped and L-shaped steel section columns. The steel beam to concrete-encased composite column with unsymmetrical steel section joints can develop stable hysteretic response and large energy absorption capacity by providing enough stirrups and decreased spacing of transverse ties in column.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.97-112
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• 2023

The Finite Element (FE) modeling of Reinforced Concrete (RC) under seismic loading has a sensitive impact in terms of getting good contribution compared to experimental results. Several idealized model types for simulating the nonlinear response have been developed based on the plasticity distribution alone the model. The Continuum Models are the most used category of modeling, to understand the seismic behavior of structural elements in terms of their components, cracking patterns, hysteretic response, and failure mechanisms. However, the material modeling, contact and nonlinear analysis strategy are highly complex due to the joint operation of concrete and steel. This paper presents a numerical simulation of a chosen RC column under monotonic and cyclic loading using the FE Abaqus, to assessthe hysteretic response and failure mechanisms in the RC columns, where the perfect bonding option is used for the contact between concrete and steel. While results of the numerical study under cyclic loading compared to experimental tests might be unsuccessful due to the lack of bond-slip modeling. The monotonic loading shows a good estimation of the envelope response and deformation components. In addition, this work further demonstrates the advantage and efficiency of the damage distributions since the obtained damage distributions fit the expected results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.90 no.6
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• pp.577-590
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• 2024

Considering the Column-Supported Group Silos (CSGSs) often arranged by rows in practical applications, earthquake responses will be affected by group effect. Since group effect presenting uncertainties, establishing the analytic model and evaluating characteristics of CSGSs seems necessary. This study aimed at providing a simplified method to evaluate seismic performances of the CSGSs. Firstly, the CSGSs with different storage granule heights are used as numerical examples to derive the base shear formula for three-particle dynamic analytical model. Then, the base shear distribution coefficient is defined as the group effect index. The simplified calculation method of the group silos based on the distribution coefficients is proposed. Finally, based on the empty, half, and full granular storage conditions, the empirical design parameters for the group silos system are given by combining finite element simulation with shaking table test. The group effect of storage granule heights of group silos on its frequency and base shear are studied by comparative analysis between group silos and independent single silo. The results show that the frequency of CSGSs decreases with the increasing weight of the stored granule. The connection between the column top and silo bottom plate is vulnerable, and structural measures should be strengthened to improve its damage resistance. In case of different storage granule heights, distribution coefficients are effective to reconstruction the group effect. The complex calculations of seismic response for CSGSs can be avoided by adopting the empirical distribution coefficients obtained in this study. The proposed method provides a theoretical reference for evaluation on the seismic performances of the CSGSs.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.353-362
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• 2022

The seismic failure-prone region in Istanbul has been examined in terms of the segmented pipelines. Although some researchers have suggested that this territory should be left as a green land, many people continue to live in this area. This region is about 9-10 km away from the North Anatolian Fault Line. This fault zone is an active right-lateral strike-slip fault line in Turkey and an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0-7.5 is expected in the Marmara Sea. Therefore, superstructures and infrastructures are under both land sliding risks and seismic risks in this area. Because there are not any pipeline-fault line intersection points in the region, in this study, it has been focused on the behaviors of the segmented (sewage or stormwater) pipelines subject to earthquake-induced permanent ground deformation and seismic wave propagation. Based on the elastic beam theory some necessary analyses have been carried out and obtained results of this approximation have been examined.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2018

Seismic retrofitting of existing buildings and design of earth-quake resistant buildings are important issues associated with earthquake-prone zones. Use of metallic-yielding dampers as an energy dissipation system is an acceptable method for controlling damages in structures and improving their seismic performance. In this study, the optimal distribution of dampers for reducing the seismic response of steel frames with multi-degrees freedom is presented utilizing the uniform distribution of deformations. This has been done in a way that, the final configuration of dampers in the frames lead to minimum weight while satisfying the performance criteria. It is shown that such a structure has an optimum seismic performance, in which the maximum structure capacity is used. Then the genetic algorithm which is an evolutionary optimization method is used for optimal arrangement of the steel dampers in the structure. In continuation for specifying the optimal accurate response, the local search algorithm based on the gradient concept has been selected. In this research the introduced optimization methods are used for optimal retrofitting in the moment-resisting frame with inelastic behavior and initial weakness in design. Ultimately the optimal configuration of dampers over the height of building specified and by comparing the results of the uniform deformation method with those of the genetic algorithm, the validity of the uniform deformation method in terms of accuracy, Time Speed Optimization and the simplicity of the theory have been proven.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.37-45
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• 1990

An analytical procedure is proposed for the seismic analysis of a soil-structure interaction system with besemat uplift, including the effects of concurrent vertical seismic ground motion, nonlinear distribution of bearing soil pressure under the basemat, and 3-dimensional behavior of the system. The soil-structure interaction system is assumed to have rectangular-shaped basemat on elastic half-space. Nonlinearity of soil spring constants and soil damping coefficients induced by the base mat uplift is modeled by considering not only the reduction of contact area between soil and structure but also the effects of rigid body rotational motion of the superstructure, and the shift in the point of action of the resultant reaction on the basemat. Throught various parametric studies. it has been confirmed that the seismic responses of the superstructure reduce notably while response at the basemat increases considerably. The results also show that the effects of concurrent vertical ground motion. nonlinear soil pressure distribution under basemat, and 3-dimensional behavior of the system shall be included in uplift analysis in order to obtain the correct structural responses.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.179-189
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• 2021

Conditional spectra (CS) are applied to the seismic fragility assessment of a nuclear power plant (NPP) containment building for comparison with a relevant conventional uniform hazard response spectrum (UHRS). Three different control frequencies are considered in developing conditional spectra. The contribution of diverse magnitudes and epicentral distances is identified from deaggregation for the UHRS at a control frequency and incorporated into the conditional spectra. A total of 30 ground motion records are selected and scaled to simulate the probability distribution of each conditional spectra, respectively. A set of lumped mass stick models for the containment building are built considering nonlinear bending and shear deformation and uncertainty in modeling parameters using the Latin hypercube sampling technique. Incremental dynamic analysis is conducted for different seismic input models in order to estimate seismic fragility functions. The seismic fragility functions and high confidence of low probability of failure (HCLPF) are calculated for different seismic input models and analyzed comparatively.