• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.12
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• pp.107-116
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• 2021

In this study, a set of laboratory liquefaction test has been conducted using undisturbed samples collected from Songlim-park, Pohang where liquefaction phenomenon had been observed in 2017. Soil samples were frozen right after tube sampling to minimize the disturbances during transport, storage, and test preparation. Cyclic triaxial test has been carried out to evaluate the liquefaction resistance ratio of undisturbed soil samples. As a result, the liquefaction resistance ratio of samples collected from 8.0~8.8 m and 11.0~11.8 m were almost similar, and these values were approximately 0.04~0.07 larger than values estimated by simplified assessment method using field test results. It is expected that the application of undisturbed sample for the evaluation of liquefaction resistance could contribute to the economical design of geotechnical structures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.121-128
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• 2018

Severe earthquakes can cause damage to society both socially and economically. An appropriate initial response can alleviate damage from severe earthquakes. In order to formulate an appropriate initial response, it is necessary to identify damage situations in societies; however, it is difficult to grasp this information immediately after an earthquake event. In this study, an earthquake damage assessment methodology for buildings is proposed for estimating damage situations immediately after severe earthquakes. A response spectrum database is constructed to provide response spectra at arbitrary locations from earthquake measurements immediately after the event. The fragility curves are used to estimate the damage of the buildings. Earthquake damage assessment is performed from the response spectrum database at the building scale to provide enhanced damage condition information. Earthquake damage assessment for Gyeongju city and Pohang city were conducted using the proposed methodology, when an earthquake occurred on September 12, 2016, and November 15, 2017. Results confirm that the proposed earthquake damage assessment effectively represented the earthquake damage situation in the city to decide on an appropriate initial response by providing detailed information at the building scale.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.219-224
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• 2018

The The purpose of this study is to investigate the actual liquefaction occurrence site in Pohang area and to analyze the ground characteristics of Pohang area using the data of the National Geotechnical Information DB Center and to calculate the liquefaction potential index. Based on the results, the distribution of soil classification in Pohang area and the risk of liquefaction under various earthquake accelerations were prepared. As a result of the study, soils in Pohang has the soil characteristics that can cause the site amplification phenomenon. In the analysis through liquefaction hazard maps under earthquake scenarios, it is found that the liquefaction occurred in the area of Heunghae town is more likely to be liquefied than other areas in Pohang. From these results, it is expected that the study on the preparation of liquefaction hazard maps will contribute to the preparation of countermeasures against liquefaction by predicting the possibility in the future.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.103-111
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• 2018

This study examines the seismic failure of RC low-rise building structures having irregularities at the ground story during the 15 November 2017 Pohang, Korea, earthquake, $M_w=5.4$, which is the second strongest since the government began monitoring them in 1978 in South Korea. Some 2,000 private houses were damaged or destroyed in this earthquake. Particularly, serious damage to the piloti story of RC low-rise residential building structures of fewer than five stories was observed within 3 km of the epicenter with brittle shear failure of columns and walls due to severe torsional behavior. Buildings below six stories constructed before 2005 did not have to comply with seismic design requirements, so confinement detailing of columns and walls also led to inadequate performance. However, some buildings constructed after 2005 were damaged at the flexible side of the piloti story due to the high torsional irregularity. Based on these results, this study focuses on the problems of the seismic torsion design approach in current building codes.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.139-145
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• 2023

It is essential to determine a proper earthquake time history as a seismic load in a seismic design for a critical structure. In the code, a seismic load should satisfy a design response spectrum and include the characteristic of a target fault. The characteristic of a fault can be represented by a definition of a type of possible earthquake time history shape that occurred in a target fault. In this paper, the pseudo-basis function is proposed to be used to construct a specific type of earthquake, including the characteristic of a target fault. The pseudo-basis function is derived from analyzing the earthquake time history of specific fault harmonic wavelet transform. To show the feasibility of this method, the proposed method was applied to the faults causing the Gyeong-Ju ML5.8 and Pohang ML5.3 earthquakes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.106 no.4
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• pp.431-440
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• 2017

The 2016 Gyeongju Earthquake ($M_L$ 5.8) (occurred on September 12, 2016) and the 2017 Pohang Earthquake ($M_L$ 5.4) (occurred on November 15, 2017) caused unprecedented damages in South Korea. It is necessary to establish basic data related to earthquake-induced mountainous sediment-related disasters over worldwide. In this study, we analyzed previous international studies on the earthquake-induced mountainous sediment-related disasters, then classified research areas according to research themes using text-mining and co-word analysis in VOSviewer program, and finally examined spatio-temporal research trends by research area. The result showed that the related-researches have been rapidly increased since 2005, which seems to be affected by recent large-scale earthquakes occurred in China, Taiwan and Japan. In addition, the research area related to mountainous sediment-related disasters induced by earthquakes was classified into four subjects: (i) mechanisms of disaster occurrence; (ii) rainfall parameters controlling disaster occurrence; (iii) prediction of potential disaster area using aerial and satellite photographs; and (iv) disaster risk mapping through the modeling of disaster occurrence. These research areas are considered to have a strong correlation with each other. On the threshold year (i.e., 2012-2013), when cumulative number of research papers was reached 50% of total research papers published since 1987, proportions per unit year of all research areas should increase. Especially, the proportion of the research areas related to prediction of potential disaster area using aerial and satellite photographs is highly increased compared to other three research areas. These trends are responsible for the rapidly increasing research papers with study sites in China, and the research papers examined in Taiwan, Japan, and the United States have also contributed to increases in all research areas. The results are could be used as basic data to present future research direction related to mountainous sediment-related disasters induced by earthquakes in South Korea.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.635-650
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• 2018

Many people have been recognized that the Korean Peninsula is no longer safe area from the earthquake by the recent earthquakes occurred in the country. The earthquakes that occurred at Pohang and Gyeongju appeared differently from them considered in the seismic design and researches on the seismic design method have been also conducted by many researchers. Studies on seismic loads are mainly focused on existing superstructures, and research involving them has been actively carried out in reality. However, paper regarding structural stability of reinforcement from seismic load such as soil-nails, rock-bolts, ground anchors which were constructed to ensure stability of serviced structure have been published rarely. In this study, ground anchor been effected by static load and seismic load which is settled in the weathered rock is analyzed. Results for static load are obtained from field test and seismic load is from numerical analysis. In this study, the behavioral characteristics of the ground anchor were analyzed by numerical analysis in case of seismic loading based on the result of the in-situ tensile test of the ground anchor settled weathered rock. As a result, settlement of concrete block due to application of tension force for ground anchor occurred as well as following loss of axial force for ground anchor. Also, as bond length and period of seismic load are longer, increasement of displacement is greater.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.658-669
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• 2020

The horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) analysis is conducted to estimate the site amplification effect and the thickness of the sedimentary layer beneath the measurement site. We investigated the effects of meteorological variations (wind and precipitation rate) and sensor burial depths on HVSR analysis. The HVSR results were unstable when seismographs were exposed on the ground. The HVSR results of ambient noise data measured under strong winds were also unstable. It is recommended to measure the ambient noise at wind speeds of <3 m s-1. Stable HVSR results were obtained when seismographs were buried, regardless of the precipitation rates. The results of this study provide the best observations and optimal weather conditions required to acquire accurate and reliable HVSR results.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.647-657
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• 2020

Infrasound signals associated with the 29 May 2004 offshore Uljin earthquake (Mw 5.1) were recorded at infrasound arrays of CHNAR (epicentral distance of 321 km) and TJNAR (256 km). Back-azimuths, indicating the directions to source locations, varied more than 28° broadly for the long-lasting signals over several minutes. From the analysis of the back-projecting location method and attenuation correction for infrasound propagation, the infrasound waves were to be generated by the interaction (diffraction) between seismic waves and topography in an area of ~4,600 ㎢ connecting the Samcheok-Uljin-Pohang regions. The maximum sound source pressure (BSP) was estimated to be 11.1 Pa. This result was consistent with the peak sound pressure (PSP) calculated by the Rayleigh integral approximation to the peak ground acceleration (PGA) dataset. In addition, the minimum PGA that was detectable at the two arrays was estimated to be ~3.0 cm s-2. Although the earthquake occurred offshore, diffracted infrasound signals were effectively generated by ground motions when seismic surface waves passed through high-topographic regions in the eastern Korean Peninsula. The relationship between infrasound source pressure and PGA can be applicable to characterize the ground motions in areas with insufficient seismological observatories.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.175-184
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• 2018

In this paper, comparative analysis of the 9.12 Gyeongju and 11.15 Pohang earthquakes was conducted in order to provide probable explanations and reasons for the damage observed in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake from both earthquake and structural engineering perspectives. The damage potentials like Arias intensity, effective peak ground acceleration, etc observed in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake were generally weaker than those of the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake. However, in contrast to the high-frequency dominant nature of the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake records, the spectral power of PHA2 record observed in the soft soil site was highly concentrated around 2Hz. The base shear around 2 Hz frequency was as high as 40% building weight. This frequency band is very close to the fundamental frequency of the piloti-type buildings severely damaged in the northern part of Pohang. Unfortunately, in addition to inherent vertical irregularity, most of the damaged piloti-type buildings had plan irregularity as well and were non-seismic. All these contributed to the fatal damage. Inelastic dynamic analysis indicated that PHA2 record demands system ductility capacity of 3.5 for a structure with a fundamental period of 0.5 sec and yield base shear strength of 10% building weight. The system ductility level of 3.5 seems very difficult to be achievable in non-seismic brittle piloti-type buildings. The soil profile of the PHA2 site was inversely estimated based on deconvolution technique and trial-error procedure with utilizing available records measured at several rock sites during the 11.15 Pohang earthquake. The soil profile estimated was very typical of soil class D, implying significant soil amplification in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake. The 11.15 Pohang earthquake gave us the expensive lesson that near-collapse damage to irregular and brittle buildings is highly possible when soil is soft and epicenter is close, although the earthquake magnitude is just minor to moderate (M 5+).