• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2011

During very strong earthquakes, seismically isolated buildings may experience large horizontal relative displacements, which may lead to poundings if an insufficiently wide clearance is provided around the building. This paper investigates, through numerical simulations, the effectiveness of using rubber bumpers, which could be attached at locations where it is likely to have impacts, in order to act as shock-absorbers. For the simulation of the dynamic behavior of such rubber bumpers during impacts, a nonlinear force-based impact model, which takes into account the finite thickness of the rubber bumpers, has been developed. Subsequently, a series of parametric analyses are performed to assess the effect of the gap size, the earthquake characteristics and the thickness, compressive capacity and damping of the bumpers. The stiffness of the moat wall is also parametrically considered during poundings of a seismically isolated building, as another potential mitigation measure for poundings of seismically isolated buildings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.91-108
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• 2017

Superstructures and isolation systems of seismically isolated buildings located close to active faults may observe increased seismic demands resulting from long-period and high-amplitude velocity and displacement pulses existent in near-fault ground motions as their fundamental periods may be close to or coincident with these near-fault pulse periods. In order to take these effects into account, the 1997 Uniform Building Code (UBC97) has specified near-source factors that scale up the design spectrum depending on the closest distance to the fault, the soil type at the site, and the properties of the seismic source. Although UBC97 has been superseded by the 2015 International Building Code in the U.S.A., UBC97 near-source factors are still frequently referred in the design of seismically isolated buildings around the world. Therefore it is deemed necessary and thus set as the aim of this study to assess the necessity and the adequacy of near-source factors for seismically isolated buildings. Benchmark buildings of different heights with isolation systems of different properties are used in comparing seismic responses obtained via time history analyses using a large number of historical earthquakes with those obtained from spectral analyses using the amplified spectrums established through UBC97 near-source factors. Results show that near-source factors are necessary but inadequate for superstructure responses and somewhat unconservative for base displacement response.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.643-651
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to evaluate seismic capacity of seismically isolated building according to the earthquake motion record selection method. To analyze the seismic behavior, 20-story building is designed, which has base isolation system. The using earthquake motion record were selected by two categories. The one is a proposed earthquake record according to soil type and response spectrum shape, and the other is a well known earthquake events such as El Centro (1940). The time history analysis results of base isolation buildings be induced difference results according to each ground motion records. Therefore detailed guidelines for the ground motion records selection method must be prepared. And the response of isolation story displacement and shear force show good seismic performance in consideration of the proposed earthquake records.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.245-255
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• 2013

According to natural frequency of soil, characteristics of earthquake responses of an isolated containment building in nuclear power plants are examined. For this, earthquake response analysis of seismically isolated containment buildings in nuclear power plants is carried out by strictly considering soil-structure interactions. The structure and near-field soil are modeled by the finite element method while far-field soil by consistent transmitting boundary. The equation of motion of a soil-structure interaction system under incident seismic wave is derived. The derived equations of motion are solved to carry out earthquake analysis of a seismically isolated soil-structure system. Generally, the results of this analysis show that seismic isolation significantly reduces the responses of the soil-structure system. However, if the natural frequency of the soil is similar to that of the soil-structure system, the responses of the containment buildings in nuclear power plants rather increases due to interactions in the system.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.133-143
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• 2015

It is very important to assure the seismic performance of equipment as well as building structures in seismic design of nuclear power plant(NPP). Seismically isolated structures may be reviewed mainly on the horizontal seismic responses. Considering the equipment installed in the NPP, the vertical earthquake responses of the structure also should be reviewed. This study has investigated the vertical seismic demand of seismically isolated structure by lead rubber bearings(LRBs). For the numerical evaluation of seismic demand of the base isolated NPP, the Korean standard nuclear power plant (APR1400) is modeled as 4 different models, which are supported by LRBs to have 4 different horizontal target periods. Two real earthquake records and artificially generated input motions have been used as inputs for earthquake analyses. For the study, the vertical floor response spectra(FRS) were generated at the major points of the structure. As a results, the vertical seismic responses of horizontally isolated structure have largely increased due to flexibility of elastomeric isolator. The vertical stiffness of the bearings are more carefully considered in the seismic design of the base-isolated NPPs which have the various equipment inside.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.231-252
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• 2010

Previous research on pounding between seismically isolated buildings during earthquakes has been focused on impacts at the bases of structures and the effect of simultaneous interactions at the bases and at the superstructures has not been studied in details. In this paper, the seismic responses of adjacent buildings supported on different or similar base systems considering impacts between bases and superstructures are numerically investigated. The study is carried out in three parts for the two types of adjacent buildings: (i) both structures have fixed bases; (ii) one structure has fixed base and the other is seismically isolated and (iii) both structures have base isolation systems. The results of the study indicate that the pounding-involved responses of the buildings depend mainly on the type of structural base systems and on the structural parameters of both buildings. For the base-isolated building, the variation of the peak accelerations and displacements of the storeys have been found to be relatively low. On the other hand, significant differences have been observed for the fixed base building. The results of the parametric study conducted for different values of the gap size between colliding structures show the reduction in the peak base displacements as the gap distance decreases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.825-837
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• 2017

Due to the severe impacts of recent earthquakes, the use of seismic isolation is paramount for the safety of nuclear structures. The diversity observed in seismic events demands ongoing research to analyze the devastating attributes involved, and hence to enhance the sustainability of base-isolated nuclear power plants. This study reports the seismic performance of a seismically-isolated nuclear reactor containment building (NRCB) under strong short-period ground motions (SPGMs) and long-period ground motions (LPGMs). The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission-based design response spectrum for the seismic design of nuclear power plants is stipulated as the reference spectrum for ground motion selection. Within the period range(s) of interest, the spectral matching of selected records with the target spectrum is ensured using the spectral-compatibility approach. NRC-compliant SPGMs and LPGMs from the mega-thrust Tohoku earthquake are used to obtain the structural response of the base-isolated NRCB. To account for the lack of earthquakes in low-to-moderate seismicity zones and the gap in the artificial synthesis of long-period records, wavelet-decomposition based autoregressive moving average modeling for artificial generation of real ground motions is performed. Based on analysis results from real and simulated SPGMs versus LPGMs, the performance of NRCBs is discussed with suggestions for future research and seismic provisions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.1743-1750
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• 2001

This paper presents an analysis of nonlinear response of the seismically isolated structure against earthquake excitation to evaluate isolation performances of a rubber bearing. In the analysis of the vibration of building, the building is modeled by lumped mass system where the restoring force is considered as linear, bilinear and trilinear. Fundamental equations of motion are derived for the base isolated structure, and hysteretic and nonlinear-elastic characteristics are considered for a numerical calculation. The excitation levels are magnified fur the recorded strong earthquake motions in order to examine dynamic stability of the structure. Seismic responses (of the building are compared fur the each restoring force type. As a result, it is shown that the effect of the motion by the nonlinear response of the building is comparatively not so large from a seismic design standpoint. The responses of the isolated structures reduce sufficiently and controled the motion of the building well in a practical range. By increasing the acceleration of the earthquake, the yielding of the farce was occurred in the concrete and steel frame, which shows the necessity of the exact nonlinear dynamic analysis.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.387-393
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• 2001

Installing vibration control devices in the structure rises as a solution instead of increasing structural strength considering construction cost. Especially, viscoelastic dampers show excellent vibration control performance at low cost and are easy to install in existing structures compared with other control devices. Therefore, cost-effectiveness of structure with viscoelastic dampers needs to be evaluated. Previous cost-effectiveness evaluation method for the seismically isolated structure(Koh et al., 1999;2000)is applied on the building structure with viscoelastic dampers, which combines optimal design and cost-effectiveness evaluation for seismically isolated structures based on minimum life-cycle cost concept. Input ground motion is modeled in the form of spectral density function to take into account acceleration and site coefficients. Damping of the viscoelastic damper is considered by modal strain energy method. Stiffness of shear building and shear area of viscoelastic damper are adopted as design variables for optimization. For the estimation of failure probability, transfer function of the structure with viscoelastic damper for spectral analysis is derived from the equation of motion. Results reveal that cost-effectiveness of the structure with viscoelastic dampers is relatively high in how seismic region and stiff soil condition.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.543-562
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• 2006

Base isolation technology has been accepted as a feasible and attractive way in improving seismic resistance of structures. The seismic design of new seismically isolated structures is mainly governed by the Uniform Building Code (UBC-97) published by the International Conference of Building Officials. In the UBC code, the distribution formula of the inertial (or lateral) forces leads to an inverted triangular shape in the vertical direction. It has been found to be too conservative for most isolated structures through experimental, computational and real earthquake examinations. In this paper, four simple and reasonable design formulae, based on the first mode of the base-isolated structures, for the lateral force distribution on isolated structures have been validated by a multiple-bay three-story base-isolated steel structure tested on the shaking table. Moreover, to obtain more accurate results for base-isolated structures in which higher mode contributions are more likely expected during earthquakes, another four inertial force distribution formulae are also proposed to include higher mode effects. Besides the experimental verification through shaking table tests, the vertical distributions of peak accelerations computed by the proposed design formulae are in good agreement with the recorded floor accelerations of the USC University Hospital during the Northridge earthquake.