• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2022

Debates on what is the first skyscraper have been ongoing from time to time since the construction of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago in 1885, which is generally recognized as the first built skyscraper. This paper attempts to verify this assertion through a detailed investigation after identifying the criteria that characterize a skyscraper. By considering and examining several competing buildings for the title of "first skyscraper" in terms of their levels of satisfying these criteria, the paper reconfirms that the Home Insurance Building in Chicago indeed qualifies as the first skyscraper and is the harbinger of future skyscrapers. By introducing technological and associated architectural innovations in this pioneering building, its designer William Le Baron Jenney paved the way for the construction of future skyscrapers. In traditional construction, heavy masonry walls especially at lower levels did not allow large window openings in exterior walls that would permit ample daylight. For the Home Insurance Building, originally built with 10 stories, Jenney created a metal-framed skeletal structure that carried the building's loads, making the building lighter and allowed for large windows permitting ample natural light to the building's interior. The exterior iron columns were encased in relatively small masonry piers mainly for fireproofing, weather-protection and façade aesthetics. Relying on the structural framing on the building's perimeter, the exterior masonry thus turned into a rudimentary "curtain wall" system, heralding the use of curtain wall construction in future skyscrapers. This building's innovative structural system led to what is known as the "Chicago Skeleton," and eventually produced remarkable skyscrapers all over the world.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.417-431
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• 2024

The fundamental period of vibration is one of the most critical parameters in the analysis and design of structures, as it depends on the distribution of stiffness and mass within the structure. Therefore, building codes propose empirical equations based on the observed periods of actual buildings during seismic events and ambient vibration tests. However, despite the fact that infill walls increase the stiffness and mass of the structure, causing significant changes in the fundamental period, most of these equations do not account for the presence of infills walls in the structure. Typically, these equations are dependent on both the structural system type and building height. The different values between the empirical and analytical periods are due to the elimination of non-structural effects in the analytical methods. Therefore, the presence of non-structural elements, such as infill panels, should be carefully considered. Another critical factor influencing the fundamental period is the effect of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI). Most seismic building design codes generally consider SSI to be beneficial to the structural system under seismic loading, as it increases the fundamental period and leads to higher damping of the system. Recent case studies and postseismic observations suggest that SSI can have detrimental effects, and neglecting its impact could lead to unsafe design, especially for structures located on soft soil. The current research focuses on investigating the effect of infill panels on the fundamental period of moment-resisting and eccentrically braced steel frames while considering the influence of soil-structure interaction. To achieve this, the effects of building height, infill wall stiffness, infill openings and soil structure interactions were studied using 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18-story 3-D frames. These frames were modeled and analyzed using SeismoStruct software. The calculated values of the fundamental period were then compared with those obtained from the proposed equation in the seismic code. The results indicate that changing the number of stories and the soil type significantly affects the fundamental period of structures. Moreover, as the percentage of infill openings increases, the fundamental period of the structure increases almost linearly. Additionally, soil-structure interaction strongly affects the fundamental periods of structures, especially for more flexible soils. This effect is more pronounced when the infill wall stiffness is higher. In conclusion, new equations are proposed for predicting the fundamental periods of Moment Resisting Frame (MRF) and Eccentrically Braced Frame (EBF) buildings. These equations are functions of various parameters, including building height, modulus of elasticity, infill wall thickness, infill wall percentage, and soil types.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.53-61
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• 2020

This study proposes a new damper configuration for seismic performance improvement of heavy sliding facilities inside a building. For this purpose, we deal with two connection types of control system, and the parametric study has been performed to investigate their comparative seismic performances according to the variations of the control capacity. In order to simulate the seismic responses of the proposed system, we employed a recently-developed seismic response analysis method that can deal with the two-mass system with nonlinear frictional sliding behavior. The numerical results demonstrate that the typical method of diagonal bracing damper connection can exhibit effective control performance both on structure and the heavy sliding facilities, whereas the structure-facilities connection method does not show any control effect on both responses. On the other hand, the typical method has some limitations that it can adversely cause excessive sliding of the facilities, depending upon the frequency characteristics of structure and earthquake. On the contrary, the structure-facilities connection method is very effective in reducing the sliding displacement of the heavy facilities, even with small amount of control capacity. Thus, the following potential expectations can be inferred from these results: The typical diagonal bracing damper connection method will have some promising benefits in controlling the sliding facilities inside the building as well as the building itself, and the structure-facilities connection method can be a cost-effective way of protecting the internal heavy important facilities inside the structure already designed with sufficient seismic performance.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.233-241
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• 2016

This paper describes the structural solution for the design of a 29-story high-rise tower, which features a large office space above the Kabukiza Theatre. Kabuki is a type of Japanese traditional drama, and Kabukiza is the home building of Kabuki. GINZA KABUKIZA is the fifth generation of the Kabukiza Theatre, the first of which was built in 1889. In order to support 23 stories of office space above the theater - featuring a large void in plan - two 13-meter-deep mega-trusses, spanning 38.4 meters, are installed at the fifth floor of the building. Steelwork is used as a primary material for the structure above-ground, and a hybrid response control system using a buckling-restrained brace and oil damper is adopted in order to achieve a high seismic performance. This paper also describes the erection process of installing hydraulic jacks directly above the mega-truss at column bases, in order to keep the structure above the truss level during construction. The temple architecture of the previous Kabukiza is carefully restored by incorporating contemporary light-weight materials supported by steelwork.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.571-586
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• 2014

This paper presents experimental and numerical study on seismic performance of a super tall steel tower structure. The steel tower, with a height of 388 meters, employs a steel space truss with spiral steel columns to serve as its main lateral load resisting system. Moreover, this space truss was surrounded by the spiral steel columns to form a steel mega system in order to support a 12-story platform building which is located from the height of 230 meters to 263 meters. A 1/40 scaled model for this tower structure was made and tested on shake table under a series of one- and two-dimensional earthquake excitations with gradually increasing acceleration amplitudes. The test model performed elastically up to the seismic excitations representing the earthquakes with a return period of 475 years, and the test model also survived with limited damages under the seismic excitations representing the earthquakes with a return period 2475 years. A finite element model for the prototype structure was further developed and verified. It was noted that the model predictions on dynamic properties and displacement responses agreed reasonably well with test results. The maximum inter-story drift of the tower structure was obtained, and the stress in the steel members was investigated. Results indicated that larger displacement responses were observed for the section from the height of 50 meters to 100 meters in the tower structure. For structural design, applicable measures should be adopted to increase the stiffness and ductility for this section in order to avoid excessive deformations, and to improve the serviceability of the prototype structure.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.757-772
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• 2018

Recently, earthquakes have occurred in large cities such as Gyeongju and Pohang, and seismic analysis studies have been actively conducted in various fields. However, since most of the previous seismic analyses have dealt with ground structures and the ground separately, there is a lack of a study on the complete soil-structure dynamic interaction. Therefore, in this study, a sensitivity analysis is conducted with MIDAS GEN and MIDAS GTS NX to apply the underground structure fixed-end model considering only the building and the complete system model considering both the building and the ground, respectively and the validity of dynamic analysis considering SSI is examined. As a result of the study, in most conditions it is found that the maximum horizontal displacement of the tall building in case of the underground structure fixed-end model is estimated to be smaller, the bending stress is larger, and the range of the weak part is smaller than that of the complete system model. Therefore, it is expected to be more reasonable to use the complete system model considering soil-structure interaction in seismic analysis.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.13-20
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• 2013

In order to reduce seismic responses of a structure, additional dampers and vibration control devices are generally considered. Usually, control performance of additional devices are investigated for optimal design without variation of characteristics of a structure. In this study, multi-objective integrated optimization of structure-smart control device is conducted and possibility of reduction of structural resources of a building structure with smart top-story isolation system has been investigated. To this end, 20-story example building structure was selected and an MR damper and low damping elastomeric bearings were used to compose a smart base isolation system. Artificial earthquakes generated based on design spectrum of low-to-moderate seismicity regions are used for structural analyses. Based on numerical simulation results, it has been shown that a smart top-story isolation system can effectively reduce both structural responses and isolation story drifts of the building structure in low-to-moderate seismicity regions. The integrated optimal design method proposed in this study can provide various optimal designs that presents good control performance by appropriately reducing the amount of structural material and damping device.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.29-35
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• 2013

The research is to verify by experiments whether the steel truss structure is able to withstand the load of cement bricks of upper part of a door for the safe use of lightweight steel truss structure instead of concrete lintel which is to be installed at upper part of door frame in building cement bricks for apartment construction. The steel truss is designed in order not to disturb bricks-building and the shape of structure was verified by bending test. According to experiments result, camber was applied to steel structure that enabled construction work to be improved and was proved effective for the prevention of accidents by cement bricks-building load test.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.5
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• pp.637-648
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• 2018

When the centers of mass and stiffness of a building do not coincide, the structure experiences torsional responses. Such systems can consist of the underlying soil and the super-structure. The underlying soil may modify the earthquake input motion and change structural responses. Specific effects of the input motion shall also not be ignored. In this study, seismic demands of asymmetric buildings considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) under near-fault ground motions are evaluated. The building is modeled as an idealized single-story structure. The soil beneath the building is modeled by non-linear finite elements in the two states of loose and dense sands both compared with the fixed-base state. The infinite boundary conditions are modelled using viscous boundary elements. The effects of traditional and yield displacement-based (YDB) approaches of strength and stiffness distributions are considered on seismic demands. In the YDB approach, the stiffness considered in seismic design depends on the strength. The results show that the decrease in the base shear considering soft soil induced SSI when the YDB approach is assumed results only in the center of rigidity to control torsional responses. However, for fixed-base structures and those on dense soils both centers of strength and rigidity are controlling.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.573-591
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• 2004

A hybrid control system is presented for seismic-resistant building structures with and without soil-structure interaction (SSI). The hybrid control is a damper-actuator-bracing control system composed of passive and active controllers. An intelligent algorithm is developed for the hybrid system, in which the passive damper is designed for minor and moderate earthquakes and the active control is designed to activate when the structural response is greater than a given threshold quantity. Thus, the external energy for active controller can be optimally utilized. In the control of a multistory building, the controller placement is determined by evaluating the optimal location index (OLI) calculated from six earthquake sources. In the study, the soil-structure interaction is considered both in frequency domain and time domain analyses. It is found that the interaction can significantly affect the control effectiveness. In the hybrid control algorithm with intelligent strategy, the working stages of passive and active controllers can be different for a building with and without considering SSI. Thus SSI is essential to be included in predicting the response history of a controlled structure.