• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.80 no.6
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• pp.677-688
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• 2021

The building design codes and standards in many countries usually are either fully or partially adopted from the international codes. However, regional conditions like the quality of construction industry and different statistical parameters of load and resistance have essential roles in the code calibration of building design codes. This paper presents a probabilistic approach to assess the reliability level of adopted national building codes by simulating design situations and considering all load combinations. The impact of the uncertainty of wind and earthquake loads, which are entirely regional condition dependent and have a high degree of uncertainty, are quantified. In this study, the design situation is modeled by generating thousands of numbers for load effect ratios, and the reliability level of steel elements for all load combinations and different load ratios is established and compared to the target reliability. This approach is applied to the Iranian structural steel code as a case study. The results indicate that the Iranian structural steel code lacks safety in some load combinations, such as gravity and earthquake load combinations, and is conservative for other load combinations. The present procedure can be applied to the assessment of the reliability level of other national codes.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 2019

In order to increase the seismic safety of nuclear power plant (NPP) structures, a technique to reduce the seismic load transmitted to the NPP structure by using a seismic isolation device such as a lead-rubber bearing has recently been actively researched. In seismic design of NPP structures, three directional (two horizontal and one vertical directions) artificial synthetic earthquakes (G0 group) corresponding to the standard design spectrum are generally used. In this study, seismic analysis was performed by using three directional artificial synthetic earthquakes (M0 group) corresponding to the maximum-minimum spectrum reflecting uncertainty of incident direction of earthquake load. The design basis earthquake (DBE) and the beyond design basis earthquakes (BDBEs are equal to 150%, 167%, and 200% DBE) of G0 and M0 earthquake groups were respectively generated for 30 sets and used for the seismic analysis. The purpose of this study is to compare seismic responses and seismic fragility curves of seismically isolated NPP structures subjected to DBE and BDBE. From the seismic fragility curves, the probability of failure of the seismic isolation system when the peak ground acceleration (PGA) is 0.5 g is about 5% for the M0 earthquake group and about 3% for the G0 earthquake group.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.597-612
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• 2016

This paper presents an optimization process using Harmony Search Algorithm for minimum weight of steel space frames under earthquake effects according to Turkish Earthquake Code (2007) specifications. The optimum designs are carried out by selecting suitable sections from a specified list including W profiles taken from American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). The stress constraints obeying AISC-Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) specifications, lateral displacement constraints and geometric constraints are considered in the optimum designs. A computer program is coded in MATLAB for the purpose to incorporate with SAP2000 OAPI (Open Application Programming Interface) to perform structural analysis of the frames under earthquake loads. Three different steel space frames are carried out for four different seismic earthquake zones defined in Turkish Earthquake Code (2007). Results obtained from the examples show the applicability and robustness of the method.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.75-81
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• 2001

Fuzzy supervisory control method is studied for the active control of earthquake excited structures. The proposed algorithm supervises and tunes previously designed control gains by evaluating the state of a structure through the fuzzy inference mechanism, which uses the information of relative displacements and velocities. Example designs and numerical simulations of earthquake exited three degrees of freedom structures are performed to prove the validity of the proposed control algorithm. Comparative results with conventional LQR method show that the proposed method is effective for the vibration suppression of earthquake excited structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2023

"Performance-based design (PBD)" is based on designing a structure with choosing a performance target under design criteria to increase the structure's resistance against earthquake effect. The plastic hinge formation is determined as one of the fundamental data in finite elements nonlinear analysis to distinguish the condition of the structure where more significant potential damage could occur. If the number of plastic hinges in the structure is increased, the total horizontal load capability of the structure is increased, also. Theoretically, when the number of plastic hinges of the plane frame structure reaches "the degree of hyperstaticity plus one", the structure will reach the capability of the largest ultimate horizontal load. As the number of plastic hinges to be formed in the structure increases towards the theoretical plastic hinge number (TPHN), the total horizontal load capability of the structure increases, proportionally. In the previous studies of the authors, the features of examining the new performance criteria were revealed and it was formulated as follows "Increase the total number of plastic hinges to be formed in the structure to the number of theoretical plastic hinges as much as possible and keep the structure below its targeted performance with related codes". With this new performance criterion, it has been shown that the total lateral load capability of the building is higher than the total lateral load capability obtained with the traditional PBD method by the FEMA 440 and FEMA 356 design guides. In this study, PBD analysis results of structures with frame carrier systems are presented in the light of the Turkey Building Earthquake Code 2019. As a result of this study, it has been shown that the load capability of the structure in the examples of structures with frame carrier system increases by using this new performance criterion presented, compared to the results of the examination with the traditional PBD method in TBEC 2019.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.356-363
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• 2000

The objectives of this study are to investigate seismic performance of spirally reinforced bridge columns and to provide test result for developing improved seismic design criteria. Quasi-static test was conducted for 12 columns of which variables were transverse reinforcement ratio and spacing, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, and axial load level. Sufficient seismic performance was observed from the test for the columns with greater confinement steel amount than the requirement of the Korean Bridge Design Specification. The columns with 0.84% of the confinement steel requirement provided adequate performance under less than 0.2 of axial load level, but showed lower ductility under 0.3 of axial load level. The current provision for the region of confinement steel distribution may be non-conservative under high axial load level, therefore a modified provision is proposed.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.09a
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• pp.423-430
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• 2001

This research was conducted to investigate the seismic behavior and ductility of circular spiral reinforcement concrete bridge columns used in high strength concrete. The experimental variables consisted of transverse steel amount and spacing, different axial load levels. From the test results, sufficient displacement ductility(at least 5.5) was observed for the columus which was satisfied wi th the requirement confinement steel amount of the Korean Bridge Design Specification. In case of the columns with 50 MPa of concrete compressive strength, the columns wi th 80 % of the confinement steel amount requirement showed adequate displacement ductility(at least 6.5) under 0.2 of axial load level. And in case of the columns with 60.2 77a of concrete compressive strength, the columns with 44 \ulcorner of the confinement steel requirement provided adequate displacement ductilit under less than 0.1 of axial load level and the columns with 0.22 % provided showed comparatively high the ducti1iffy under 0.21 of axial load level.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.63-72
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• 2001

In this paper, to satisfy the safety and economy immediately, we assume the center of lateral load in case the dynamic motion of the torsionally unbalanced structure is transformed into the static lateral load using modal analysis and proposes a method to control the design eccentricity in order to make the center of lateral load coincide with the center of strength. And when the structure is designed by proposed method, it is shown that the structure designed by proposed method does not demand excessive additional ductility in comparison with the structure designed by provisions of other seismic building code.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.109-118
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• 1999

Lifeline system such as oil or gas pipelines and water supply facilities are vulneratble to seismic damages because they are widely exposed to ground failures. Most seismic design criteria of buried pipelines are based on the notion that the longitudinal compressive strain and therefore buckling controls the design. Buckling analysis of buried pipelines subjected to seismic loading is performed by considering the seismic load as the sinusoidally distributed compressive load on the beam on elastic foundation in contrast to existing studies where the buckling load is treated as an end load on the beam column, An approximated analytical solution is obtained by the energy method and its validity is confirmed by the linearized finite element buckling analysis. The results show the beam mode buckling because longitudinal strains at the buckling loads are substantially lower than the strain at the onset of local buckling.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.2 s.54
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• pp.81-94
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• 2007

In most experimental researches on the liquefaction phenomenon, an earthquake as a random vibration has been regraded as a sinusoidal wave or a triangular wave with an equivalent amplitude. Together with the development in the part of signal control and data acquisition, dynamic experimental equipments in the soil dynamics have also developed rapidly and further more, several real earthquakes have been simulated in the large model test such as shaking table tests and centrifuge tests. In Korea, several elementary laboratory tests to simulate the real earthquake load were performed. From these test results, it was reported that the sinusoidal wave cannot reliably reflect the soil dynamic behavior under the real earthquake motion. In this study, 4 types of dynamic motions such as the sinusoidal wave, the triangular wave, the incremental triangular wave and several real earthquake motions which were classified with shock-type and vibration-type were loaded to find something new to explain the change of the excess pore water pressure under the real earthquake load. Through the detailed investigation and comparison on all test results, it is found that the dynamic flow is generated by the soil plastic deformation and the velocity head of dynamic flow is changed the pressure head in the un-drained condition. It can be concluded that the change of the excess pore water pressure is related to the pressure head of dynamic flow. Lastly, a new hypothesis to explain such a liquefaction initiation phenomenon under the real earthquake load is also proposed and verified.