Turkey is located in one of the most seismically active regions of in Europe. The majority of the population living in big cities are at high seismic risk due to insufficient structural resistance of the existing buildings. Such a seismic risk brings the need for a comprehensive seismic evaluation based on the risk analysis in Turkey. Determining the seismic resistance level of existing building stock against the earthquakes is the first step to reduce the damages in a possible earthquake. Recently in January 2020, the Elazig earthquake brought the importance of the issue again in the public. However, the excessive amount of building stock, labor, and resource problems made the implementation phase almost impossible and revealed the necessity to carry out alternative studies on this issue. This study aims for a detailed investigation of residential buildings in Antalya, Turkey. The approach proposed here can be considered an improved state of building survey methods previously identified in Turkey's Design Code. Antalya, Turkey's fifth most populous city, with a population over 2.5 Million, was investigated as divided into sub-regions to understand the vulnerability, and a threshold value found for the study area. In this study, 26,610 reinforced concrete buildings between 1 to 7 stories in Antalya were examined by using the rapid visual assessment method. A specific threshold value for the city of Antalya was determined with the second level examination and statistical methods carried out in the determined sub-region. With the micro zonation process, regions below the threshold value are defined as the priority areas that need to be examined in detail. The developed methodology can be easily calibrated for application in other cities and can be used to determine new threshold values for those cities.

The present study covenants with the static and free vibration behavior of nanocomposite sandwich plates reinforced by carbon nanotubes resting on Pasternak elastic foundation. Uniformly distributed (UD-CNT) and functionally graded (FG-CNT) distributions of aligned carbon nanotube are considered for two types of sandwich plates such as, the face sheet reinforced and homogeneous core and the homogeneous face sheet and reinforced core. Based on the first shear deformation theory (FSDT), the Hamilton's principle is employed to derive the mathematical models. The obtained solutions are numerically validated by comparison with some available cases in the literature. The elastic foundation model is assumed as one parameter Winkler - Pasternak foundation. A parametric study is conducted to study the effects of aspect ratios, foundation parameters, carbon nanotube volume fraction, types of reinforcement, core-to-face sheet thickness ratio and types of loads acting on the bending and free vibration analyses. It is explicitly shown that the (FG-CNT) face sheet reinforced sandwich plate has a high resistance against deflections compared to other types of reinforcement. It is also revealed that the reduction in the dimensionless natural frequency is most pronounced in core reinforced sandwich plate.

Strain rate investigations are needed to calibrate strain-rate-dependent material models and numerical codes. An appropriate material model, which considers the rate effects, need to be used for proper numerical modeling. The plastic concrete cut-off wall is a special underground structure that acts as a barrier to stop or reduce the groundwater flow. These structures might be subjected to different dynamic loads, especially earthquake. Deformability of a structure subjected to dynamic loads is a principal issue which need to be undertaken during the design phase of these structures. The characterization of plastic concrete behavior under different strain rates is essential for proper designing of cut-off walls subjected to dynamic loads. The Cowper-Symonds model, as one of the most commonly applied material models, complies well with the behavior of a plastic concretes in low to moderate strain rates and will be useful in explicit dynamics simulations. This paper aims to present the results of an experimental study on mechanical responses of one of the most useful types of plastic concrete and Cowper-Symonds constant determination procedures in a wide range of strain rate from 0.0005 to 107 (1/s). For this purpose, SHPB, uniaxial, and triaxial compression tests were done on plastic concrete samples. Based on the results of quasi-static and dynamic tests, the dynamic increase factors (DIF) of this material in different strain rates and stress state conditions were determined for calibration of the Cowper - Symonds material models.

Experimental and discrete element method were used to investigate the effects of joint number and its angularities on the shear behaviour of joint's bridge area. A new shear test condition was used to model the gypsum cracks under shear loading. Gypsum samples with dimension of 120 mm×100 mm×50 mm were prepared. the length of joints was 2cm. in experimental tests, the joint number is 1, 2 and 3 and its angularities change from 0° to 90° with increment of 45°. Assuming a plane strain condition, special rectangular models are prepared with dimension of 120 mm×100 mm. similar to joints configuration in experimental test, 9 models with different joint number and joint angularities were prepared. This testing show that the failure process is mostly governed by the joint number and joint angularities. The shear strengths of the specimens are related to the fracture pattern and failure mechanism of the discontinuities. The shear behaviour of discontinuities is related to the number of induced tensile cracks which are increased by increasing the rock bridge length. The strength of samples decreases by increasing the joint number and joint angularities. Failure pattern and failure strength are similar in both of the experimental test and numerical simulation.

Concrete bond strength with steel re-bars depends on multiple factors including concrete-steel interface and mechanical properties of concrete. However, the hydration development of cementitious paste, and in turn the mechanical properties of concrete, are negatively affected by cold weather. This study aimed at exploring the concrete-steel bonding behavior in concrete cast and cured under freezing temperatures. Three concrete mixtures were cast and cured at -10 and -20℃. The mixtures were protected using conventional insulation blankets and a hybrid system consisting of insulation blankets and phase change materials. The mixtures comprised General Use cement, fly ash (20%), nano-silica (6%) and calcium nitrate-nitrite as a cold weather admixture system. The mixtures were tested in terms of internal temperature, compressive, tensile strengths, and modulus of elasticity. In addition, the bond strength between concrete and steel re-bars were evaluated by a pull-out test, while the quality of the interface between concrete and steel was assessed by thermal and microscopy studies. In addition, the internal heat evolution and force-slip relationship were modeled based on energy conservation and stress-strain relationships, respectively using three-dimensional (3D) finite-element software. The results showed the reliability of the proposed models to accurately predict concrete heat evolution as well as bond strength relative to experimental data. The hybrid protection system and nano-modified concrete mixtures produced good quality concrete-steel interface with adequate bond strength, without need for heating operations before casting and during curing under freezing temperatures down to -20℃.

Reinforced concrete (RC) does not provide sufficient resistance against impacts and blast loads, and the brittle structure of RC fails to protect against fractures due to the lack of shock absorption. Investigations on improving its resistance against explosion and impact have been actively conducted on high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCCs), such as fiber-reinforced concrete and ultra-high-performance concrete. For these HPFRCCs, however, tensile strength and toughness are still significantly lower compared to compressive strength due to their limited fiber volume fraction. Therefore, in this study, the tensile behavior of slurry-infiltrated fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (SIFRCCs), which can accommodate a large number of steel fibers, was analyzed under static and dynamic loading to improve the shortcomings of RC and to enhance its explosion and impact resistance. The fiber volume fractions of SIFRCCs were set to 4%, 5%, and 6%, and three strain rate levels (maximum strain rate: 250 s^-1) were applied. As a result, the tensile strength exceeded 15 MPa under static load, and the dynamic tensile strength reached a maximum of 40 MPa. In addition, tensile characteristics, such as tensile strength, deformation capacity, and energy absorption capacity, were improved as the fiber volume fraction and strain rate increased.

In engineering structures, to having the projected structure to serve all the engineering purposes, the theory to be used during the modeling stage is also of great importance. In the present work, an analytical solution of the free vibration of the beam composed of functionally graded materials (FGMs) is presented utilizing different beam theories. The comparison of supposed beam theory for free vibration of functionally graded (FG) beam is examined. For this aim, Euler-Bernoulli, Rayleigh, Shear, and Timoshenko beam theories are employed. The functionally graded material properties are assumed to vary continuously through the thickness direction of the beam with respect to the volume fraction of constituents. The governing equations of free vibration of FG beams are derived in the frameworks of four beam theories. Resulting equations are solved versus simply supported boundary conditions, analytically. To verify the results, comparisons are carried out with the available results. Parametrical studies are performed for discussing the effects of supposed beam theory, the variation of beam characteristics, and FGM properties on the free vibration of beams. In conclusion, it is found that the interaction between FGM properties and the supposed beam theory is of significance in terms of free vibration of the beams and that different beam theories need to be used depending on the characteristics of the beam in question.

The aim of this paper is to develop design-oriented models for the prediction of the ultimate strength and ultimate axial strain for concrete confined with glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) wraps. Twenty of most used and recent design-oriented models developed to predict the strength and strain of GFRP-confined concrete in circular sections are selected and evaluated basing on a database of 163 test results of concrete cylinders confined with GFRP wraps subjected to uniaxial compression. The evaluation of these models is performed using three statistical indices namely the coefficient of the determination (R²), the root mean square error (RMSE), and the average absolute error (AAE). Based on this study, new strength and strain models for GFRP-wrapped concrete are developed using regression analysis. The obtained results show that the proposed models exhibit better performance and provide accurate predictions over the existing models.