• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.167-190
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• 2011

In order to upgrade the seismic resistibility of structures and enhance the functionality of an isolator, a new base isolator called the multiple trench friction pendulum system (MTFPS) is proposed in this study. The proposed MTFPS isolator is composed of a trench concave surface and several intermediate sliding plates in two orthogonal directions. Mathematical formulations have been derived to examine the characteristics of the proposed MTFPS isolator possessing numerous intermediate sliding plates. By means of mathematical formulations which have been validated by experimental results of bidirectional ground shaking, it can be inferred that the natural period and damping effect of the MTFPS isolator with several intermediate sliding plates can be altered continually and controllably during earthquakes. Furthermore, results obtained from the component and shaking table tests demonstrate that the proposed isolator provides good protection to structures for prevention of damage from strong earthquakes.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.561-570
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• 2012

Seismic collapse analysis requires efficient and automated method to perform thousands of time history analyses. The paper introduced the advantages of speed and convergence property of explicit method, provided a few techniques to accelerate speed of calculation and developed an automated procedure for collapse assessment, which combines the strong capacity of commercial explicit finite element software and the flexible, intelligent specialties of control program written in FORTRAN language aiming at collapse analysis, so that tedious and heavy work of collapse analysis based on FEMAP695 can be easily implemented and resource of calculation can be made the best use of. All the key commands of control program are provided to help analyzers and engineers to cope with collapse assessment conveniently.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.633-648
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• 2014

The seismic safety of concrete dams is one of the important problems in the engineering due to the vast socio-economic disasters which may be caused by collapse of these infrastructures. The accuracy of the risk evaluation associated with these existing dams as well as the efficient design of future dams is highly dependent on a proper understanding of their behaviour due to earthquakes. This paper develops an anisotropic damage model for arch dam under strong earthquakes. The modified Drucker-Prager criterion is adopted as the failure criteria of the dynamic damage evolution of concrete. Some process fields and other necessary information for the safety evaluation are obtained. The numerical results show that the seismic behaviour of concrete dams can be satisfactorily predicted.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1384-1396
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• 2018

One of the failure modes observed in steel yield energy dissipating devices (SYEDs) excited by a strong earthquake would be the low-cycle fatigue failure. Fatigue cracks of a SYED are prone to initiate at the notch areas where stress concentration is usually occurred, which is demonstrated by the cyclic tests and analyses carried out for this study. Since the fatigue failure of SYEDs dramatically deteriorates their structural capacities, the thorough investigation on their fatigue life is usually required. To do this, sophisticated modeling with considering a time-consuming and complicate fracture mechanism is generally needed. This study makes an effort to investigate the low-cycle fatigue life of SYEDs predicted by a simplified method utilizing damage indices and fatigue prediction equations that are based on the plastic strain amplitudes obtained from typical finite element analyses. This study shows that the low-cycle fatigue failure of SYEDs predicted by the simplified method can be conservatively in good agreement with the test results of SYED specimens prepared for experimental validation.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2014

In current seismic design code, steel moment frames are classified into ordinary, intermediate, and special moment frames. In the case of special moment frames which have large R-factor, economic design is possible by reducing the design lateral force. However, there is difficulty for practical application due to constraints such as strong column-weak beam requirement. This study evaluated if steel intermediate moment frame could maintain enough seismic capacity when the R-factor is increased from 4.5 to 6. As for the analytical models, steel moment frames of 3 and 5 stories were categorized into four performance groups according to seismic design category. Seismic performances of the frames were evaluated through the procedure based on FEMA P695. FEMA P695 utilizes nonlinear static analysis(pushover analysis) and nonlinear dynamic analysis(incremental dynamic analysis, IDA). In order to reflect the characteristics of Korean steel moment frames on the analytical model, the beam-column connection was modeled as weak panel zone where the collapse of panel zone was indirectly considered by checking its ultimate rotational angle after an analysis is done. The analysis result showed that the performance criteria required by FEMA P695 was satisfied when R-factor increased in all the soil conditions except $S_E$.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.791-818
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• 2015

RC buildings constitute the prevailing type of construction in earthquake-prone region like Kathmandu Valley. Most of these building constructions were based on conventional methods. In this context, the present paper studied the seismic behaviour of existing RC buildings in Kathmandu Valley. For this, four representative building structures with different design and construction, namely a building: (a) representing the non-engineered construction (RC1 and RC2) and (b) engineered construction (RC3 and RC4) has been selected for analysis. The dynamic properties of the case study building models are analyzed and the corresponding interaction with seismic action is studied by means of non-linear analyses. The structural response measures such as capacity curve, inter-storey drift and the effect of geometric non-linearities are evaluated for the two orthogonal directions. The effect of plan and vertical irregularity on the performance of the structures was studied by comparing the results of two engineered buildings. This was achieved through non-linear dynamic analysis with a synthetic earthquake subjected to X, Y and $45^{\circ}$ loading directions. The nature of the capacity curve represents the strong impact of the P-delta effect, leading to a reduction of the global lateral stiffness and reducing the strength of the structure. The non-engineered structures experience inter-storey drift demands higher than the engineered building models. Moreover, these buildings have very low lateral resistant, lesser the stiffness and limited ductility. Finally, a seismic safety assessment is performed based on the proposed drift limits. Result indicates that most of the existing buildings in Nepal exhibit inadequate seismic performance.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-215
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• 2016

Rehabilitation of historical unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is a priority in many parts of the world, since those buildings are a living part of history and a testament of human achievement of the era of their construction. Many of these buildings are still operational; comprising brittle materials with no reinforcements, with spatially distributed mass and stiffness, they are not encompassed by current seismic assessment procedures that have been developed for other structural types. To facilitate the difficult task of selecting a proper rehabilitation strategy - often restricted by international treaties for non-invasiveness and reversibility of the intervention - and given the practical requirements for the buildings' intended reuse, this paper presents a practical procedure for assessment of seismic demands of URM buildings - mainly historical constructions that lack a well-defined diaphragm action. A key ingredient of the method is approximation of the spatial shape of lateral translation, ${\Phi}$, that the building assumes when subjected to a uniform field of lateral acceleration. Using ${\Phi}$ as a 3-D shape function, the dynamic response of the system is evaluated, using the concepts of SDOF approximation of continuous systems. This enables determination of the envelope of the developed deformations and the tendency for deformation and damage localization throughout the examined building for a given design earthquake scenario. Deformation demands are specified in terms of relative drift ratios referring to the in-plane and the out-of-plane seismic response of the building's structural elements. Drift ratio demands are compared with drift capacities associated with predefined performance limits. The accuracy of the introduced procedure is evaluated through (a) comparison of the response profiles with those obtained from detailed time-history dynamic analysis using a suite of ten strong ground motion records, five of which with near-field characteristics, and (b) evaluation of the performance assessment results with observations reported in reconnaissance reports of the field performance of two neoclassical torsionally-sensitive historical buildings, located in Thessaloniki, Greece, which survived a major earthquake in the past.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.337-347
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• 2018

This paper presents some shaking table tests conducted on a 1/4-scaled model with 5-story steel reinforced concrete (SRC) spatial frame with irregular section columns under a series of base excitations with gradually increasing acceleration peaks. The test frame was subjected to a sequence of seismic simulation tests including 10 white noise vibrations and 51 seismic simulations. Each seismic simulation was associated with a different level of seismic disaster. Dynamic characteristic, strain response, acceleration response, displacement response, base shear and hysteretic behavior were analyzed. The test results demonstrate that at the end of the loading process, the failure mechanism of SRC frame with irregular section columns is the beam-hinged failure mechanism, which satisfies the seismic code of "strong column-weak beam". With the increase of acceleration peaks, accumulated damage of the frame increases gradually, which induces that the intrinsic frequency decreases whereas the damping ratio increases, and the peaks of acceleration and displacement occur later. During the loading process, torsion deformation appears and the base shear grows fast firstly and then slowly. The hysteretic curves are symmetric and plump, which shows a good capacity of energy dissipation. In summary, SRC frame with irregular section columns can satisfy the seismic requirements of "no collapse under seldom earthquake", which indicates that this structural system is suitable for the construction in the high seismic intensity zone.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.349-360
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• 2018

Reinforced concrete (RC) moment frames supported on two ground levels have been widely constructed in mountainous areas with medium to high seismicity in China. In order to investigate the seismic collapse behavior and risk, a scaled frame model was tested under constant axial load and reversed cyclic lateral load. Test results show that the failure can be induced by the development of story yielding at the first story above the upper ground. The strong column and weak beam mechanism can be well realized at stories below the upper ground. Numerical analysis model was developed and calibrated with the test results. Three pairs of six case study buildings considering various structural configurations were designed and analyzed, showing similar dynamic characteristics between frames on two ground levels and flat ground of each pair. Incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) were then conducted to obtain the seismic collapse fragility curves and collapse margin ratios of nine analysis cases designated based on the case study buildings, considering amplification of earthquake effect and strengthening measures. Analysis results indicate that the seismic collapse safety is mainly determined by the stories above the upper ground. The most probable collapse mechanism may be induced by the story yielding of the bottom story on the upper ground level. The use of tie beam and column strengthening can effectively enhance the seismic collapse safety of frames on two ground levels.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.2
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• pp.251-267
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• 2020

Transmission tower-line systems have come to represent one of the most important infrastructures in today's society. Recent strong earthquakes revealed that transmission tower-line systems are vulnerable to earthquake excitations, and that ground motions may arrive at such structures from any direction during an earthquake event. Considering these premises, this paper presents experimental and numerical studies on the dynamic responses of a 1000 kV ultrahigh-voltage (UHV) transmission tower-line system under different seismic incidence angles. Specifically, a 1:25 reduced-scale experimental prototype model is designed and manufactured, and a series of shaking table tests are carried out. The influence of the seismic incidence angle on the dynamic structural response is discussed based on the experimental data. Additionally, the incidence angles corresponding to the maximum peak displacement of the top of the tower relative to the ground (referred to herein as the critical seismic incidence angles) are summarized. The experimental results demonstrate that seismic incidence angle has a significant influence on the dynamic responses of transmission tower-line systems. Subsequently, an approximation method is employed to orient the critical seismic incidence angle, and a corresponding finite element (FE) analysis is carried out. The angles obtained from the approximation method are compared with those acquired from the numerical simulation and shaking table tests, and good agreement is observed. The results demonstrate that the approximation method can properly predict the critical seismic incidence angles of transmission tower-line systems. This research enriches the available experimental data and provides a simple and convenient method to assess the seismic performance of UHV transmission systems.