• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.397-408
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• 2018

In a recent tragic fire incident, the Plasco Tower collapsed after an intense outburst of fire lasting for three and a half hours and claiming the lives of 16 firefighters and 6 civilians. This paper will present continuing collaborative work between Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Queen's University in Canada to model the progressive collapse of the tower. The fire started at the 10th floor and was observed to have travelled along the floor horizontally and through the staircase and windows vertically. Plasco Tower was steel structure and all the steel sections were fabricated by welding standard European channel or angle profiles and no fire protection was applied. Four internal columns carried the loads transferred by the primary beams, and box columns were constructed along the perimeter of the building as a braced tube for resisting seismic loading. OpenSees fibre-based sections and displacement-based beam-column elements are used to model the frames, while shell elements are used for the reinforced concrete floor slabs. The thermal properties and elevated temperature mechanical properties are as recommended in the Eurocodes. The results in this preliminarily analysis are based on rough estimations of the structure's configuration. The ongoing work looks at modeling the Plasco Tower based on the most accurate findings from reviewing many photographs and collected data.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.2
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• pp.195-206
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• 2022

Significant structural damages due to earthquakes reveal the importance of seismic design provisions. This paper presents a comparison between the seismic design provisions of Albania, Croatia, Iran, and Turkey for the design of mid-rise reinforced-concrete (RC) frames. Information on the historical development of the considered provisions are given. The code provisions are compared, illustrating the main differences in the minimum requirements for column and beam detailing and analysis for mid-rise RC frames. 4-story, 5-story, and 6-story buildings are designed according to each design code, and their performance is evaluated comparatively by using a displacement-based adaptive pushover procedure and eigenvalue analysis. It is observed that recent Turkish code has the highest and Albanian code has the lowest level of requirements in terms of member size and reinforcement detailing. The considered models indicate 15%, 20% and 50%, lower period values than the Croatia, Iran and Albania buildings, respectively. Additionally, building models per Croatia, Iran and Albania codes have 30%, 35% and 65% less base shear capacity when compared to Turkish building codes. Building models per Croatia and Iran codes indicate similar properties both in terms of strength and stiffness.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2012

A general earthquake resistant design philosophy of ductile frame buildings allows beams to form plastic hinges adjacent to beam-column connections. In order to carry out this design philosophy, the ultimate bond or shear strength of the beam should be greater than the flexural yielding force and should not degrade before reaching its required ductility. The behavior of RC members dominated by bond or shear action reveals a dramatic reduction of energy dissipation in the hysteretic response due to the severe pinching effects. In this study, a method was proposed to predict the deformability of reinforced concrete members with short-span-to-depth-ratios, which would result in bond failure after flexural yielding. Repeated or cyclic loading produces a progressive deterioration of bond that may lead to failure at lower cyclic bond stress levels. Accumulation of bond damage is caused by the propagation of micro-cracks and progressive crushing of concrete in front of the lugs. The proposed method takes into account bond deterioration due to the degradation of concrete in the post yield range. In order to verify bond deformability of the proposed method, the predicted results were compared with the experimental results of RC members reported in the technical literature. Comparisons between the observed and calculated bond deformability of the tested RC members showed reasonably good agreement.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2012

In this paper the seismic performance of a flat plate wall system structure was evaluated based on the ATC-63 approach, and the results were compared with those of a wall slab structure having the same size. As analysis model structures, a twelve story flat plate wall structure and a wall slab structure were designed based on the KBC-2009, and their seismic performances and collapse behaviors were evaluated by nonlinear static and incremental dynamic analyses(IDA). It was observed that the flat plate wall structure was designed with smaller amount of reinforced concrete, and showed slightly larger displacement response compared with those of the wall slab structure. The collapse margin ratios of the two structures obtained from the incremental dynamic analyses satisfied the limit states specified in the ATC-63, and the structures turned out to have enough capacity to resist the design level seismic load.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.162-171
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• 2023

In this study, The details for a seismic adapter designed to easily connect concrete structures and reinforcement materials for the in-plane reinforcement of aged structures were proposed. Proposed seismic adapter was tested for performance using a dynamic simulation on a 2-story column-beam structure, scaled to half of the real size. The experimental results showed that the reinforced test specimens using the seismic adapter improved their energy dissipation capacity by 3.5 times compared to the non-reinforced specimens. It was confirmed that the seismic adapter experienced no damage within its general usage range, thus proving its effectiveness. Subsequently, upon loading until the limit of deformation (a deformation angle of 3.3%), it was observed that one of the M10 bolts connecting the adapter and the reinforcement at the lower part of the first floor broke. Considering this finding, when applying seismic retrofitting in real situations, emphasis should be placed on the design of the bolts and anchors connecting the seismic adapter. This aspect warrants further research for validation.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.439-452
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• 1994

A method to optimize the cost of R/C frames and an algorithm of the optimal limit state design for R/C frames subjected to dynamic loads are presented. The modal superposition method was used to find the dynamic responses of the frames. Each member of R/C frame is made up of more than two elements and the stiffness matrix and consistent mass matrix of three d.o.f in the node of each element was used to include axial, shear and flexural effects. The objective function to be minimized formulated the cost of materials, steel and concrete, and optimised to satisfy the behaviors of R/C frame and each constraint imposed by the limit state requirements. Both objective function and each constraint are derived in terms of design variables which include the effective depth, beam width, compression and tension steel area, and column shear steel area. A few applications are presented which demonstrate the feasibility, the validity and efficiency of the algorithm for automated optimum design of R/C frames where dynamic behavior is to be considered.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.611-620
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• 2016

In the construction of nuclear power plants, only 420 MPa reinforcing bars are allowed and, therefore, so many large-diameter bars are placed, which results in steel congestion. Consequently, re-bar works are difficult and the quality of RC structures may be deteriorated. To solve the steel congestion, 550 MPa bars are necessary. Among many items for verifying structural performance of reinforced concrete with 550 MPa bars, the 43 mm hooked bars are examined in this study. All specimens failed by side-face blowout and the side cover explosively spalled at maximum loads. The bar force was initially transferred to the concrete primarily by bond along a straight portion. At the one third of maximum load, the bond reached a peak capacity and began to decline, while the hook bearing component rose rapidly. At failure, most load was resisted by the hook bearing. For confined specimens with hoops, the average value of test-to-prediction ratios by KCI code is 1.45. The modification factor of confining reinforcement which was not allowed for larger than 35 mm bars can be applied to 43 mm hooked bars. For specimens with 70 MPa concrete, the average value of test-to-prediction ratios by KCI code is 1.0 which is less than the values of the other specimens. The effects of concrete compressive strength should be reduced. An equation to predict anchorage capacity of hooked bars was developed from regression analysis including the effects of compressive strength of concrete, embedment length, side cover thickness, and transverse reinforcement index.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.430-439
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• 2002

The development of reinforcing steel is required in reinforced concrete structures. The standard hooks that have been widely used for the tensile development in the beam-column joints tend to create difficulties of construction such as steel congestion as the member cross sections are becoming smaller due to the use of higher strength concrete and higher grade steel. Using the reinforcing bars with end mechanical anchoring device (headed reinforcement) provides potential economies in construction such as reduction in development lengths, simplified details, and improved responses to cyclic loadings. In this paper, the pullout strengths and behaviors of the headed reinforcement were experimentally studied. In 33 pullout tests performed using D25 deformed reinforcing bars, the test parameters were embedment depth, edge distance, head size, and the use of transverse reinforcement. The pullout strengths determined from tests closely agreed with the pullout strengths predicted using the CCD method. The pullout strengths increased with increasing embedment depths nd edge distances. The strengths tend to increase with the use of larger heads. From the experimental program where the effect of the transverse reinforcement was examined, a modification factor to the CCD was suggested to represent the effect of such reinforcement that is installed across the concrete failure plane on the pullout strengths.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.9-18
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• 1999

The seismic over-strength factor Ω is evaluated for 4-story reinforced concrete buildings in Korea, which has low seismic intensity. For this study, the seismic load suggested in' Aseismic guideline research- phase ll' (in Korea) is used. When 3D study-models are designed, span length and bay number are varied and accidental torsional moment is considered. And the models are analyzed by push-over analysis, in which external and internal frame are connected by rigid-link. As a result of numerical experiments, Ω is increased as the bay number or span length is increased. Because, by the including of accidental torsional moment in designing process, the increased ratio of strength of external columns is larger than the increased ratio of span length or bay number. And this makes the failure mode of model closer or strong-column and weak-beam mechanism.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2004

A new earthquake design method performing iterative calculations using secant stiffness was developed. The proposed design method has the advantages of convenience and stability in numerical analysis because it uses elastic analysis. At the same time, the proposed design method can accurately estimate the strength and ductility demands on the members because it performs the analysis on the inelastic behavior of structure using iterative calculation. In the present study, the procedure of the proposed design method was established, and a computer program incorporating the proposed method was developed. Design examples using the proposed method were presented, and its advantages were presented by the comparisons with existing design methods using elastic or inelastic analysis. The proposed design method, as an integrated method of analysis and design, can address the earthquake design strategy devised by the engineer. such as ductility limit on each member, the design concept of strong column - weak beam, and etc. In addition, through iterative calculations on the structure preliminarily designed only with member sizing, the strength and ductility demands of each member can be directly calculated so as to satisfy the given design strategy. As the result. economical and safe design can be achieved.