• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.473-485
• /
• 2018

The buildings of architectural and cultural heritage are mostly built with stone or brick wall elements, which are connected using limestone or limestone cement mortar, without a full knowledge of the mechanical properties of masonry structures. The compatibility of heritage masonry buildings with valid technical specifications and the rules for earthquake resistance implies the need for construction work such as repairs, strengthening or reconstruction. By strengthening the masonry buildings, ductility and bearing capacity are increased to a level, which, in the case of the earthquake design, allows for some damage to happen, however the structure retains sufficient usability and bearing capacity without the possibility of collapse. Comparison between traditional and modern techniques for seismic strengthening of masonry buildings is given according to their effects, benefits and disadvantages. Recent Croatian provisions provided for heritage buildings enabling deviation of technical specifications are discussed.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.23-30
• /
• 2013

This paper explains the Japanese present situations relevant to the fire resistance performance. Performance-based fire provisions was introduced in 1998 for the first time when the Building Standard Law was amended. However, performance-based fire resistance design had been used since long before the official introduction of performance-based provisions. A Comprehensive Technology Development Project of Ministry of Construction from 1982 to 1986 established a technical basis for performance-based fire safety engineering in Japan. A system of calculation methods for fire resistance verification was prescribed in the Ministry Notification in 2000 utilizing the results of this project as a background. This method, referred to as the Fire Resistance Verification Method (FRVM), is the standard method to verify the fire resistance performance of principal building parts such as columns, beams, and walls of steel, concrete, or wood structured buildings. For tall buildings, however, more advanced method for performance verification is often necessary because new building materials or structural systems are often used for these buildings. An example project of tall building owned by a major newspaper company is presented in this paper. Advanced thermal deformation analysis is executed to secure the fire resistance of the building.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
• /
• v.1 no.3
• /
• pp.169-179
• /
• 2012

The development history, the current situation and the future of the performance-based seismic design of building structures in China are presented in this paper. Firstly, the evolution of performance-based seismic design of building structures specified in the Chinese codes for seismic design of buildings of the edition 1974, 1978, 1989, 2001 and 2010 are introduced and compared. Secondly, in two parts, this paper details the provisions of performance-based seismic design in different Chinese codes. The first part is about the "Code for Seismic Design of Buildings" (GB50011) (edition 1989, 2001 and 2010) and "Technical Specification for Concrete Structures of Tall Building", which presents the concepts and methods of performance-based seismic design adopted in Chinese codes; The second part is about "Management Provisions for Seismic Design of Outof-codes High-rise Building Structures" and "Guidelines for Seismic Design of Out-of-codes High-rise Building Structures", which concludes the performance-based seismic design requirements for high-rise building structures over the relevant codes in China. Finally, according to those mentioned above, this paper pointed out the imperfections of current performance-based seismic design in China and proposed the possible direction for further improvement.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.505-523
• /
• 2018

Static pushover analyses of typical existing reinforced concrete frames, designed according to the previous generations of design codes in Greece, have established these structures' inelastic characteristics, namely overstrength, global ductility capacity and available behaviour factor q, under planar response. These were compared with the corresponding demands at the collapse limit state target performance point. The building stock considered accounted for the typical variability, among different generations of constructed buildings in Greece, in the form, the seismic design code in effect and the material characteristics. These static pushover analyses are extended, in the present study, in the time history domain. Consequently, the static analysis predictions are compared with Incremental Dynamic Analysis results herein, using a large number of spectrum compatible recorded base excitations of recent destructive earthquakes in Greece and abroad, following, for comparison, similar conventional limiting failure criteria as before. It is shown that the buildings constructed in the 70s exhibit the least desirable behaviour, followed by the buildings constructed in the 60s. As the seismic codes evolved, there is a notable improvement for buildings of the 80s, when the seismic code introduced end member confinement and the requirement for a joint capacity criterion. Finally, buildings of the 90s, designed to modern codes exhibit an exceptionally good performance, as expected by the compliance of this code to currently enforced seismic provisions worldwide.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
• /
• v.2 no.2 s.4
• /
• pp.11-15
• /
• 2002

Formerly, it was called a tent and now, it is called membrane structure. If saying a tent, it imagines the tent of Bedouin, Mongolia and North American Indian. It became clear from the excavated wall painting that have been covered with the retractable roof of the canvas on the auditorium at the amphitheater in Pompeii and became a topic. These tents were made of the animal skins or fabric woven with the flax plants, and these tents are still used. However, if saying membrane material at present, it says the one to have applied a coating resin to the textile. Because the base fabric of membrane material is a woven fabric, the relation between the stress and the strain is different to the direction of the weaving thread. Moreover, the tensile force must always occur in the membrane surface. From these reasons, because the membrane structure corresponds to the particular building material and the construction method about the Building Standard Law, it must be examined specially that the membrane structural building have the same or any more safety as the provisions which was set to the Building Standard Law. Therefore, the technical standards about the membrane structural building became indispensable. In the paper, the kinds of the membrane materials, which are used for the membrane structural buildings, and technical standards process of the creating for the membrane structure buildings are introduced. Lastly, some of the soccer stadiums for 2002 FIFA World Cup KOREA/JAPAN which be covered with the roof of the membrane structures are presented.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.379-399
• /
• 2015

Existing building structures can easily present material mechanical properties which can largely vary even within a single structure. The current European Technical Code, Eurocode 8, does not provide specific instructions to account for high variability in mechanical properties. As a consequence of the high strength variability, at the occurrence of seismic events, the structure may evidence unexpected phenomena, like torsional effects, with larger experienced deformations and, in turn, with reduced seismic performance. This work is focused on the torsional effects related to the irregular stiffness and strength distribution due to the concrete strength variability. The analysis has been performed on a case-study, i.e., a 3D RC framed 4 storey building. A Normal distribution, compatible to a large available database, has been taken to represent the concrete strength domain. Different plan layouts, representative of realistic stiffness distributions, have been considered, and a statistical analysis has been performed on the induced torsional effects. The obtained results have been compared to the standard analysis as provided by Eurocode 8 for existing buildings, showing that the Eurocode 8 provisions, despite not allowing explicitly for material strength variability, are conservative as regards the estimation of structural demand.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.321-337
• /
• 2015

Existing building structures can easily present material mechanical properties which can largely vary even within a single structure. The current European Technical Code, Eurocode 8, does not provide specific instructions to account for high variability in mechanical properties. As a consequence of the high strength variability, at the occurrence of seismic events, the structure may evidence unexpected phenomena, like torsional effects, with larger experienced deformations and, in turn, with reduced seismic performance. This work is focused on the reduction in seismic performance due to the concrete strength variability. The analysis has been performed on a case-study, i.e., a 3D RC framed 4 storey building. A Normal distribution, compatible to a large available database, has been taken to represent the concrete strength domain. Different plan layouts, representative of realistic strength distributions, have been considered, and a statistical analysis has been performed on the induced reduction in seismic performance. The obtained results have been compared to the standard analysis as provided by Eurocode 8 for existing buildings. The comparison has shown that the Eurocode 8 provisions are not conservative for existing buildings having a large variability in concrete strength.

• Wind and Structures
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.143-152
• /
• 2020

The wind design of buildings is typically based on strength provisions under ultimate loads. This is unlike the ductility-based approach used in seismic design, which allows inelastic actions to take place in the structure under extreme seismic events. This research investigates the application of a similar concept in wind engineering. In seismic design, the elastic forces resulting from an extreme event of high return period are reduced by a load reduction factor chosen by the designer and accordingly a certain ductility capacity needs to be achieved by the structure. Two reasons have triggered the investigation of this ductility-based concept under wind loads. Firstly, there is a trend in the design codes to increase the return period used in wind design approaching the large return period used in seismic design. Secondly, the structure always possesses a certain level of ductility that the wind design does not benefit from. Many technical issues arise when applying a ductility-based approach under wind loads. The use of reduced design loads will lead to the design of a more flexible structure with larger natural periods. While this might be beneficial for seismic response, it is not necessarily the case for the wind response, where increasing the flexibility is expected to increase the fluctuating response. This particular issue is examined by considering a case study of a sixty-five-story high-rise building previously tested at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario using a pressure model. A three-dimensional finite element model is developed for the building. The wind pressures from the tested rigid model are applied to the finite element model and a time history dynamic analysis is conducted. The time history variation of the straining actions on various structure elements of the building are evaluated and decomposed into mean, background and fluctuating components. A reduction factor is applied to the fluctuating components and a modified time history response of the straining actions is calculated. The building components are redesigned under this set of reduced straining actions and its fundamental period is then evaluated. A new set of loads is calculated based on the modified period and is compared to the set of loads associated with the original structure. This is followed by non-linear static pushover analysis conducted individually on each shear wall module after redesigning these walls. The ductility demand of shear walls with reduced cross sections is assessed to justify the application of the load reduction factor "R".

• Land and Housing Review
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.79-82
• /
• 2012

While there exists a relatively large body of technical information for the engineered design of wood-frame buildings to resist seismic ground motions, the quantitative assessment of seismic resistance of conventional houses built by prescriptive requirements is less well understood. Forintek Canada Corp., in collaboration with other research and industry partners, has embarked on a research project to address this topic. This paper will report on the seismic shake table tests of a full-scale wood-frame building. The two-story specimen, $6m{\times}6m$ in plan, was built on the seismic shake table at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, according to Part 9 of the 1995 National Building Code of Canada and shaken uni-directionally in each of the two principal directions. Three different seismic table motions were applied at increasing peak ground motion amplitudes up to 0.40 and 0.50 g. The specimen was repaired after the above sets of seismic table motions, and successive runs were conducted for increased door openings. Measurements included specimen accelerations, displacements and anchorage forces. Static stiffness of the specimen was measured at low force levels, and natural frequencies were measured after each seismic loading stage by applying low-level random excitation. The results presented consist of the capacity spectra of the shake table tests, changes in specimen stiffness and natural frequencies with increasing seismic loading. These results and those from other recent shake table tests elsewhere will be compared with simplified engineering calculations based on codified values of strength, and on that basis preliminary conclusions will be drawn on the adequacy of the current code provisions and design guides in Canada and the USA for conventional wood-frame construction.