• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제77권2호
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• pp.293-304
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• 2021

Structural failure due to seismic pounding between two adjacent buildings is one of the major concerns in the context of structural damage. Pounding between adjacent structures is a commonly observed phenomenon during major earthquakes. When modelling the structural response, stiffness of impact spring elements is considered to be one of the most important parameters when the impact force during collision of adjacent buildings is calculated. Determining valid and realistic stiffness values is essential in numerical simulations of pounding forces between adjacent buildings in order to achieve reasonable results. Several impact model stiffness values have been presented by various researchers to simulate pounding forces between adjacent structures. These values were mathematically calculated or estimated. In this study, a linear spring impact element model is used to simulate the pounding forces between two adjacent structures. An experimental model reported in literature was adopted to investigate the effect of different impact element stiffness k on the force intensity and number of impacts simulated by Finite Element (FE) analysis. Several numerical analyses have been conducted using SAP2000 and the collected results were used for further mathematical evaluations. The results of this study concluded the major factors that may actualise the stiffness value for impact element models. The number of impacts and the maximum impact force were found to be the core concept for finding the optimal range of stiffness values. For the experimental model investigated, the range of optimal stiffness values has also been presented and discussed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제26권4호
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• pp.285-297
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• 2024

Due to the imbalanced vibration of the adjacent buildings, the pounding phenomenon occurs as a result of an insufficient gap between them. Providing enough gap between adjacent structures is the most efficient approach to preventing the pounding effect. This paper calculated the required separation gaps between adjacent buildings, including two, four, eight, twelve and twenty stories steel moment-resisting frames, and investigated their related influencing parameters such as time periods, damping ratios, and the number of bays. The linear and nonlinear dynamic time-history analyses under real seismic event records were conducted to calculate the required separation gaps by obtaining relative displacement and velocity functions of two adjacent frames. The results showed that the required separation gap increased when the time periods of adjacent frames were not the same. The resulting separation gaps values of linear and nonlinear analyses were similar only for two and four stories frames. In other frames, the resulting separation gap values of linear analyses surpassed the corresponding nonlinear analyses. Although increasing the damping ratios in adjacent frames causes a decrease in the required separation gaps, the number of bays had no significant effect on them.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.217-231
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• 2014

Ancient masonry towers are regarded as among the most important historical heritage structures of the world. These slender structures typically have orthogonal and circular geometry in plane. These structural forms are commonly installed with adjacent structures. Because of their geometrical shapes and structural constraints, ancient masonry towers are more vulnerable to earthquake damage. The main goal of the paper is to investigate the seismic behavior of Erzurum Clock Tower under earthquake loading and to determine the contribution of the castle walls to the seismic performance of the tower. In this study, four three-dimensional finite element models of the Erzurum Clock Tower were developed and the seismic responses of the models were investigated. Time history analyses were performed using the earthquakes that took place in Turkey in 1983 near Erzurum and in 1992 near Erzincan. In the first model, the clock tower was modeled without the adjacent walls; in the second model, the clock tower was modeled with a castle wall on the south side; in the third model, the clock tower was modeled with a castle wall on the north side; and in the last model, the clock tower was modeled with two castle walls on both the north and south sides. Results of the analyses show that the adjacent walls do not allow lateral movements and the horizontal displacements decreases. It is concluded that the adjacent structures should be taken into consideration when modeling seismic performance in order to get accurate and realistic results.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제33권2호
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• pp.61-67
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• 2018

This study proposes a new vibration control approach for adjacent twin structures, which is termed as viscous damper asymmetric coupling system in this paper. The proposed system takes a concept that the diagonal bracing viscous dampers are asymmetrically distributed in two buildings to break the behavior symmetry of the twin buildings and then the coupling viscous damper is additionally installed at the top floor of the two buildings to couple both buildings and interactively transfer the asymmetric behavior-caused damping forces into both buildings. These asymmetric damping distributions and interacting damping forces of the connection damper efficiently suppress the overall vibration of the damper-coupled adjacent twin buildings efficiently. Genetic algorithm (GA) based multi-objective optimization technique is adopted for optimal design of the proposed system. In the numerical example of adjacent twin 10-story building structures, the conventional control approach, that is, uniform damping distribution system (UDS) is also taken into account for comparison purpose. The optimization results verify that the proposed system either can improve the control performance over the UDS with the same damping capacity, or can save the damping capacity significantly while maintaining the similar level of control performance to the UDS.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.165-181
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• 2023

The effectiveness of fluid viscous dampers (FVDs) on dynamic response mitigation of coupled two adjacent structures was investigated, considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects under earthquake excitation. A numerical procedure was employed to evaluate system response. The finite elements were used for the numerical treatment of the adjacent buildings and soil region. Viscous boundary conditions were used as special non-reflecting boundaries on the edges of finite soil region. According to the results, the FVDs were found to be very effective for dynamic response mitigation of the adjacent buildings, even if considering the soil medium. The results showed that the most affecting parameter on the system response was found to be soil type. It was also concluded that when adjacent structures coupled by FVDs, the maximum values of the roof displacements, the base shear forces, and the base bending moments could decrease up to around 50%. Changing in lateral stiffness of the one building has minor effects on the effectiveness of viscous dampers.

• 한국터널지하공간학회 논문집
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.251-261
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• 2007

본 연구는 터널굴착 공사에 의한 지반거동을 평가하여, 구조물의 형상, 위치, 굴착공정 변화등의 다양한 조건과 지반/구조물의 상호작용이 고려된 모형실험을 기본으로 수행하였다. 굴착진행 단계에 따른 구조물의 손상 거동 평가시 인접 구조물이 밀집된 도심지 굴착에서는 보다 안전하고 보수적인 평가가 나타나는 각변위와 수평변형율에 의한 손상도표를 활용하는 것이 보다 안전할 것으로 판단된다. 모형실험시 구조물에 발생된 균열의 손상수준을 손상도표에서 평가해 본 결과, 균열손상 수준이 적용된 평가가 각변위와 수평변형율만 적용된 손상수준보다 안전측으로 평가되는 것을 확인할 수 있었다. 그러므로, 각변위와 수평변형율 뿐만 아니라 균열이 고려된 손상평가를 수행하는 것이 보다 바람직할 것으로 판단된다.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제18권5호
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• pp.543-553
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• 2020

Past earthquakes experience shows that serious damage or collapse of buildings have dramatically accrued when sufficient separation distance has not been provided between two adjacent structures. The majority of past studies related to the pounding topic indicate that obtaining the gap size between two buildings is able to prevent collision and impact hazards during seismic excitations. Considering minimization of building collisions, some relationships have been suggested to determine the separation distance between adjacent buildings. Commonly, peak lateral displacement, fundamental period and natural damping as well as structural height of two adjacent buildings are numerically considered to determine the critical distance. Hence, the aim of present study is to focus on all mentioned parameters and also utilizing the main characteristic of earthquake record i.e. PGA to examine the lateral displacement of irregular structures close to each other and also estimate the sufficient separation distance between them. Increasing and decreasing the separation distance is inherently caused economical problems due to the land ownership from a legal perspective and pounding hazard as well. Therefore, a new equation is proposed to determine the optimum critical distance. The accuracy of the proposed formula is validated by different models and various earthquake records.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.149-169
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• 2011

Dynamic response of two adjacent single degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structures connected with friction damper under base excitation is investigated. The base excitation is modeled as a stationary white-noise random process. As the force-deformation behavior of friction damper is non linear, the dynamic response of connected structures is obtained using the equivalent linearization technique. It is observed that there exists an optimum value of the limiting frictional force of the damper for which the mean square displacement and the mean square absolute acceleration responses of the connected structures attains the minimum value. The close form expressions for the optimum value of damper frictional force and corresponding mean square responses of the coupled undamped structures are derived. These expressions can be used for initial optimal design of the friction damper for connected structures. A parametric study is also carried out to investigate the influence of system parameters such as frequency ratio and mass ratio on the response of the coupled structures. It has been observed that the frequency ratio has significant effect on the performance of the friction damper, whereas the effects of mass ratio are marginal. Finally, the verification of the derived close from expressions is made by correlating the response of connected structures under real earthquake excitations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제83권2호
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• pp.153-166
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• 2022

Structural pounding due to strong seismic excitations can result in severe damage or even collapse of colliding structures. Many researchers focused on studying the mutual pounding between two adjacent structures while very few researches were concerned with the pounding of a series of structures. This paper aims to study the pounding effect on a series of four buildings having different natural frequencies. The paper also investigates the effect of different arrangements of the four buildings on their pounding response. For this, a mathematical model was constructed using Matlab code where, pounding was modeled using a contact force-based approach. A Non-Linear viscoelastic (Hertzdamp) contact element was used and activated only during the approach period of collision. The mathematical model was validated by comparing its prediction versus experimental results on three adjacent buildings. Then the model was used to study the pounding between four adjacent structures arranged in different sequences according to their natural frequencies. The results revealed that increasing the gap distance generally led to decrease the peak responses of the towers. Such response is somehow different from that predicted earlier by the authors for the case of three adjacent buildings. Moreover, the arrangement of towers has a significant effect on their pounding response. Significant difference between the natural frequencies of adjacent structures increases the pounding forces especially when the more flexible buildings are located at the outer edge of the series. The study points out the need for further researches on buildings in series to gain a better understanding of such complex phenomena.

• 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.