• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.603-619
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• 2014

Soft storey buildings are characterised by having a storey that has a large amount of open space. This soft storey creates a major weak point during an earthquake. As the soft stories are typically associated with retail spaces and parking garages, they are often on the lower levels of tall building structures. Thus, when these stories collapse, the entire building can also collapse, causing serious structural damage that may render the structure completely unusable. The use of special soft storey is predominant in the tall building structures constructed by several local developers, making the issue important for local building structures. In this study, the effect of the incorporation of an isolator on the seismic behaviour of tall building structures is examined. The structures are subjected to earthquakes typical of the local city, and the isolator is incorporated with the appropriate isolator time period and damping ratio. A FEM-based computational relationship is proposed to increase the storey height so as to incorporate the isolator with the same time period and damping ratio for both a lead rubber bearing (LRB) and high-damping rubber bearing (HDRB). The study demonstrates that the values of the FEM-based structural design parameters are greatly reduced when the isolator is used. It is more beneficial to incorporate a LRB than a HDRB.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.129-144
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• 2020

In this study, the idea of damping force linearly proportional to horizontal isolation displacement is implemented into sloped rolling-type bearings in order to meet different seismic performance goals. In addition to experimentally demonstrating its practical feasibility, the previously developed analytical model is further modified to be capable of accurately predicting its hysteretic behavior. The numerical predictions by using the modified analytical model present a good match of the shaking table test results. Afterward, several sloped rolling-type bearings designed with linearly variable damping force are numerically compared with a bearing designed with conventional constant damping force. The initial friction damping force adopted in the former is designed to be smaller than the constant one adopted in the latter. The numerical comparison results indicate that when the horizontal isolation displacement does not exceed the designed turning point (or practically when subjected to minor or frequent earthquakes that seldom have a great displacement demand for seismic isolation), the linearly variable damping force design can exhibit a better acceleration control performance than the constant damping force design. In addition, the former, in general, advantages the re-centering performance over the latter. However, the maximum horizontal displacement response of the linearly variable damping force design, in general, is larger than that of the constant damping force design. It is particularly true when undergoing a horizontal isolation displacement response smaller than the designed turning point and designing a smaller value of initial friction damping force.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.319-334
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• 2018

In this paper, an analytical study was carried out to propose an optimum base-isolated system for the design of steel structures equipped with lead rubber bearings (LRB). For this, 5 and 10-storey steel moment resisting frames (MRFs) were designed as Special Moment Frame (SMF). These two-dimensional and three-bay frames equipped with a set of isolation systems within a predefined range that minimizes the response of the base-isolated frames subjected to a series of earthquakes. In the design of LRB, two main parameters, namely, isolation period (T) and the ratio of strength to weight (Q/W) supported by isolators were considered as 2.25, 2.5, 2.75 and 3 s, 0.05, 0.10 and 0.15, respectively. The Force-deformation behavior of the isolators was modelled by the bi-linear behavior which could reflect the nonlinear characteristics of the lead-plug bearings. The base-isolated frames were modelled using a finite element program and those performances were evaluated in the light of the nonlinear time history analyses by six natural accelerograms compatible with seismic hazard levels of 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years. The performance of the isolated frames was assessed in terms of roof displacement, relative displacement, interstorey drift, absolute acceleration, base shear and hysteretic curve.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.523-532
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• 2019

Different types of gas reservoir such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) are among the strategic infrastructures, and have great importance for any government or their private owners. To keep the tank and its contents safe during earthquakes especially if the contents are of hazardous or flammable materials; using seismic protection systems such as base isolator can be considered as an effective solution. However, the major deficiency of this system can be the large deformation in the isolation level which may lead to the failure of bearing system. In this paper, as a solution, the efficacy of an optimally designed combined vibration control system, the combined laminated rubber isolator and rotational friction damper, is investigated to evaluate the enhancement of an existing metal tank response under both far- and near-field earthquakes. Responses like impulsive and convective accelerations, base shear, and sloshing height are studied herein. The probabilistic framework is used to consider the uncertainties in the structural modeling, as well as record-to-record variability. Due to the high calculation cost of probabilistic methods, a simplified structural model is used. By using the Mont-Carlo simulation approach, it is revealed that this combined isolation system is a highly reliable system which provides considerable enhancement in the performance of reservoir, not only leads to the reduction of probability of catastrophic failure of the tank but also decrease the reservoir damage during the earthquake. Moreover, the relative displacement of the isolation level is controlled very well by this combined system.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.391-398
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• 2000

To evaluate the seismic performance of a base isolated building accurate analytical model should be selected. The analytical results such as reduced accelerations member forces and relative displacements of the superstructure of the base isolated building are only meaningful when the analytical model is close enough to the real structure. Real size one bay-two story steel frame and two kinds of seismic isolators(laminated elastomeric bearing and lead-rubber bearing) are designed. manufactured and constructed in the laboratory. Free vibration tests using fuse bars were conducted to evaluate the change of dynamic characteristics(period and damping) before and after base isolation of the steel frame. The experimental results of free vibration tests were also used as a bench mark for adjusting the selected analytical modeling to real base isolated steel frame.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.09a
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• pp.320-328
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• 2001

Base Isolation system is an effective design strategy that provides a practical substitute for the seismic design of bridge. In this study, the dynamic tests were performed on two kinds of aseismic bridge bearings : Hydampot (hysteretic damping bearing) and Dynapot . Then, the dynamic analysis was carried out far a bridge using the experimental results to estimate the seismic performance of the bearings. Analysis was performed for four types oi earthquake loadings. The results of the dynamic test and theoretical analysis indicate that the performance of both bridge bearings is appropriate fur the earthquake loading.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.288-294
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• 2003

Increasing the volume of traffic on the roads causes social and economical problems such as increasing air-pollution and distribution cost. Prefabricated light weight bridge becomes a possible solution for these problems in the urban area where it is difficult to construct new one or expend the existing road. There are some merits in this kind of bridge. First, the design live and dead loads are minimized by allowing only passenger cars. Second employing prefabrication construction scheme reduces the construction time. Third, there is no need to buy land if the elevation road is placed on the top of existing one. In seismic design of bridges, base isolation has been an effective solution when the bridge has stiff piers and a heavy superstructure. The prefabricated light weight bridge has different dynamic characteristics from the ordinary bridges. In this paper, the applicability of base isolators such as lead rubber bearing and elastomeric bearing, to prefabricated light weight bridge is examined.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.186-192
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• 1993

Proto-type seismic isolation rubber bearings are investigated through nonlinear hyperelasticity finite elements using the ANSYS general purpose structural analysis code. The purpose of the analysis was to determine the maximum horizontal strain range which can be obtained with a 250KN hydraulic actuator. A Mooney-Rivlin strain energy density function was used as a constitutive law for rubber. The results are compared with the test data available in the literature and found to in good agreement only in the higy strain range. The analysis results can be used with conservatism to predict the necessary force required to a specified displacement such as the purpose of this analysis. However, more precise constitutive model will be required to simulate the bearing behavior with accuracy in the mid-range strain.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.959-982
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• 2015

In this study, a non-stationary random earthquake Clough-Penzien model is used to describe earthquake ground motion. Using stochastic direct integration in combination with an equivalent linear method, a solution is established to describe the non-stationary response of lead-rubber bearing (LRB) system to a stochastic earthquake. Two parameters are used to develop an optimization method for bearing design: the post-yielding stiffness and the normalized yield strength of the isolation bearing. Using the minimization of the maximum energy response level of the upper structure subjected to an earthquake as an objective function, and with the constraints that the bearing failure probability is no more than 5% and the second shape factor of the bearing is less than 5, a calculation method for the two optimal design parameters is presented. In this optimization process, the radial basis function (RBF) response surface was applied, instead of the implicit objective function and constraints, and a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm was used to solve the optimization problems. By considering the uncertainties of the structural parameters and seismic ground motion input parameters for the optimization of the bearing design, convex set models (such as the interval model and ellipsoidal model) are used to describe the uncertainty parameters. Subsequently, the optimal bearing design parameters were expanded at their median values into first-order Taylor series expansions, and then, the Lagrange multipliers method was used to determine the upper and lower boundaries of the parameters. Moreover, using a calculation example, the impacts of site soil parameters, such as input peak ground acceleration, bearing diameter and rubber shore hardness on the optimization parameters, are investigated.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 2011

In this study, a smart base isolation system has been proposed to reduce dynamic responses of a spacial structure subjected to seismic excitation. MR dampers and low damping elastomeric bearings were used to compose a smart base isolation system and its vibration control performance has been investigated compared to that of the optimally designed lead-rubber bearing (LRB) isolation system. Control performance of smart base isolation system depends on control algorithm. Fuzzy controller was used in this study to effectively control the spacial structure having a smart base isolation system. Dynamic responses of the spacial structure with isolation system is conflict with base drifts and thus these two responses are selected as objective functions to apply multi-objective genetic algorithm to optimization of fuzzy controller. Based on numerical simulation results, it has been shown that the smart base isolation system proposed in this study can drastically reduce base drifts and seismic responses of the example spacial structure in comparison with the optimally designed LRB isolation system.