Seismic structural fragility constitutes an important step for performance based seismic design. Lateral load-resisting structural members are often analyzed under one component base excitation, while the effect of bi-directional shaking is accounted per simplified rules. Fragility curves are constructed herein under real bi-directional excitation by a simple extension of the conventional Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) under uni-directional shaking. Simple SODF systems, parametrically adjusted to different periods, are examined under a set of near-fault and far-fault excitations. Consideration of bi-directional interaction appears important for stiff systems. Further, the study indicates that the peak ground accelertaion, velocity and displacement (PGA, PGV and PGD) of accelerogram are relatively stable and efficient intensity measures for short, medium and long period systems respectively. '30%' combination rule seems to reasonably predict the fragility under bi-directional shaking at least for first mode dominated systems dealt herein up to a limit state of damage control.

Two dimensional numerical investigations were carried out to study the influence of interface thickness and their pattern on the behavior of reinforced concrete frames subjected to in-plane lateral loads using commercial finite element tool SAP 2000. The linear elastic analysis was carried out on one and two bay structural systems as well as the influence of number of stories was studied by varying the number of stories as single, three and five. The cement mortar was used as interface material and their effect was studied by varying thicknesses as 6, 8, 10, 14 and 20 mm. The interface was recognized as one sided, two sided, three sided and four sided and their effect was studied by removing the interface material between the reinforced concrete frame and masonry infill. The effect of lateral loads on infill masonry wall was also studied by varying assumed loads as 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 kN. The behavior of infilled frames studied has revealed that there is a maximum influence of interface thickness and interface pattern corresponding to 10 mm thickness. In general, the lateral displacement of frame is increased linearly with increase in lateral loads.

An efficient and general numerical strategy for fluid-structure interaction problems is presented where either the fluid or the structure part are represented by nonlinear models. This partitioned strategy is implemented under the form of code coupling that allows to (re)-use previous made developments in a more general multi-physics context. This strategy and its numerical implementation is verified on classical fluid-structure interaction benchmarks, and then applied to the impact of tsunamis waves on submerged structures.

This paper deals with frequency analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beams carrying an arbitrary number of Kelvin-Voigt viscoelastic dampers, subjected to harmonic loads. Multiple external/internal dampers occurring at the same position along the beam axis, modeling external damping devices and internal damping due to damage or imperfect connections, are considered. The challenge is to handle simultaneous discontinuities of the response, in particular bending-moment/rotation discontinuities at the location of external/internal rotational dampers, shear-force/deflection discontinuities at the location of external/internal translational dampers. Following a generalized function approach, the paper will show that exact closed-form expressions of the frequency response under point/polynomial loads can readily be derived, for any number of dampers. Also, the exact dynamic stiffness matrix and load vector of the beam will be built in a closed analytical form, to be used in a standard assemblage procedure for exact frequency response analysis of frames.

Coupled structures are widely seen in civil and mechanical engineering. In coupled structures, monitoring the translational motion of its key components is of great importance. For instance, some coupled arms are equipped with a hydraulic piston to provide the stiffness along the piston axial direction. The piston moves back and forth and a distance sensing system is necessary to make sure that the piston is within its stroke limit. The measured motion data also give us insight into how the coupled structure works and provides information for the design optimization. This paper develops two distance sensing systems for coupled structures. The first system measures distance with ultrasonic sensor. It consists of an ultrasonic sensing module, an Arduino interface board and a control computer. The system is then further upgraded to a three-sensor version, which can measure three different sets of distance data at the same time. The three modules are synchronized by the Arduino interface board as well as the self-developed software. Each ultrasonic sensor transmits high frequency ultrasonic waves from its transmitting unit and evaluates the echo received back by the receiving unit. From the measured time interval between sending the signal and receiving the echo, the distance to an object is determined. The second distance sensing system consists of a wire draw encoder, a data collection board and the control computer. Wire draw encoder is an electromechanical device to monitor linear motion by converting a central shaft rotation into electronic pulses of the encoder. Encoder can measure displacement, velocity and acceleration simultaneously and send the measured data to the control computer via the data acquisition board. From experimental results, it is concluded that both the ultrasonic and the wire draw encoder systems can obtain the linear motion of structures in real-time.