• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.559-567
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• 2017

Slender structures like reinforced concrete (RC) chimneys are severely damaged or collapsed during severe wind storms or strong ground motions all over the world. Today, with the improvement in technology and industry, most factories need these slender structures with increasing height and decreasing in shell thickness causing vulnerable to winds and earthquakes. Main objectives in this study are to make structural wind and earthquake analysis of RC chimneys by using a well-known international standard CICIND 2001 and real recorded time history accelerations and to clarify weak points of these tall and slender structures against these severe natural actions. Findings of this study show that maximum tensile stress and shear stress approximately increase 103.90% and 312.77% over or near the openings on the body of the RC chimneys that cause brittle failure around this region of openings.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.03a
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• pp.238-246
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• 2003

By using simulated ground motions, which is sum of earthquake signals and noise, we measured the distortion of response spectra due to noise. We found that the distortion is more closely related to the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio of root-mean-square (RMS) measurement than that of conventional peak measurement. Given a S/M ratio, the distortion of absolute acceleration response spectra is independent on the earthquake magnitude, while that of relative displacement response spectra has a strong dependence on the earthquake magnitude. This means that, when we calculate response spectra from time histories, we can efficiently predict the distortion of acceleration response spectra simply by measuring the RMS SJN ratios, or the distortion of displacement response spectra by combining the RMS S/N ratios and the earthquake magnitudes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.355-363
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• 2019

Masonry structures in the rural areas of Turkey often damaged due to moderate and big earthquakes. After every earthquake many scientists made field investigations on the earthquake performance of these structures and gave many useful information on construction techniques. However, the newly constructed masonry buildings are still not suitable for the suggested techniques, and they are still in danger against future earthquakes. Five moderate earthquakes of moment magnitude Mw 5.3, 5.3, 5.2, 5.0, and 5.3 struck the Ayvacik-Çanakkale District of Turkey between 6 and 12 February, 2017. More than a thousand of aftershocks were occurred and most of the masonry buildings in the villages nearby main shock epicenter were affected. The author went to the earthquake field and investigated the earthquake performances of masonry structures. This paper presents the recorded acceleration data, acceleration response spectra, and the seismological aspects of these earthquakes. Besides, case studies of damaged stone masonry buildings, and failure mechanisms are discussed with illustrated photos which were taken during the field investigations. It is concluded that the damaged masonry buildings were not designed and constructed properly in accordance with the Turkish building codes or similar specifications.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.15-36
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• 2016

The components of the seismic behavior factor of RC frames are expected to change as structural redundancy increases. Most researches indicate that increasing redundancy is desirable in response to stochastic events such as earthquake loading. The present paper investigated the effect of redundancy on a fixed plan for seismic behavior factor components and the nonlinear behavior of RC frames. The 3D RC moment resistant frames with equal lateral resistance were designed to examine the role of redundancy in earthquake-resistant design and to distinguish it from total overstrength capacity. The seismic behavior factor and dynamic behavior of structures under natural strong ground motions were numerically evaluated as the judging criteria for structural seismic behavior. The results indicate that increasing redundancy alone in a fixed plan cannot be defined as a criterion for improving the structural seismic behavior.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.671-683
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• 2013

The May 19, 2011 an earthquake hit Simav (K$\ddot{u}$tahya) province in Turkey. Simav is a district of K$\ddot{u}$tahya located 255 km southwest from capital city of Turkey. According to Turkish General Directorate of Disaster Affairs (DAD), the magnitude of this moderate earthquake was 5.7. The major percent of the housing stock in the affected region was built in masonry. Many masonry dwellings, mosques and also minarets were heavily damaged due to this seismic activity. The Halil Aga Mosque and its minaret were also heavily damaged as a masonry structure around the earthquake region. In this paper, a site survey of masonry damages is presented and Response Spectrum Analysis of the Halil Aga Mosque is performed using the finite element method.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.425-436
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• 2019

Successive ground motions having short time intervals have occurred in many earthquakes so far. It is necessary to investigate the effects of this phenomenon on different types of structures and to take these effects into consideration while designing or retrofitting structures. The effects of seismic sequences on the structures with combined reinforced concrete shear wall and moment resisting frame system have not been investigated in details yet. This paper has tried to analyse the seismic performance of structures with such structural systems subjected to mainshock-aftershock sequences. The effects of the seismic sequences on the investigated models are evaluated by strong measures such as IDA capacity and fragility and vulnerability curves. The results of this study show that the seismic sequences have a significant effect on the investigated models, which necessitates considering this effect on designing, retrofitting, decision making, and taking precautions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.88 no.3
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• pp.209-220
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• 2023

This study investigates the effectiveness of tuned mass dampers (TMDs) in controlling vibrations in low-rise reinforced concrete buildings. It examines both linear and nonlinear behaviors of concrete structures subjected to strong ground motions from the PEER database. The research follows the ASCE 7-16 provisions to model structural nonlinearity. Additionally, the study explores the effect of varying TMD mass ratios on the performance of these systems in real-world conditions. The findings emphasize the importance of accounting for structural nonlinearity in low-rise buildings, highlighting its significant influence on the controlled response under severe seismic excitations. The study suggests including nonlinear analysis in seismic design practices and recommends customizing TMD designs to optimize vibration control. These recommendations have practical implications for enhancing the safety and effectiveness of seismic design practices for low-rise buildings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.1-11
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• 2007

This paper verifies the difference of the seismic behavior and seismic damage of the neighboring two reinforced concrete piers damaged by the 1995 Hyogoken Nanbu earthquake. The two piers were almost the same size, carrying slightly different dead load, and were provided with the same reinforcement arrangement except the amount of longitudinal reinforcement at the bottom portion of the piers. The pier with more reinforcement was completely collapsed due to this near field earthquake by shear failure at the longitudinal reinforcement cut-off while the other was only damaged at the bottom by flexure even though the longitudinal reinforcement cut-off was also existed at the mid height of the pier. According to the results of the pseudo dynamic test, the seismic damage was recognized to be greatly dependent on the ground motion characteristics even though the employed ground motions had the same peak acceleration. The severe damage was observed when the test employed the seismic wave that had strong influence to the longer period range compared to the initial natural period of the pier. On the other hand, based on the similar model experiment, the defect of gas-pressure welded splice of longitudinal reinforcement was revealed to save the piers against collapse due to the so-called fail-safe mechanism contrary to the intuitive opinion of some researchers. It was concluded that the primary cause of the collapse of the pier was the extremely strong intensity and peculiar characteristics of the earthquake motion according to both the site-specific and the structure-specific effects.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.663-674
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• 2015

Many seismically vulnerable regions in India and worldwide are located on deep soil deposits which extend to several hundred meters of depth. It has been well recognized that the earthquake shaking is altered by geological conditions at the location of building. As seismic waves propagates through uppermost layers of soil and rock, these layers serve as filter and they can increase the duration and amplitude of earthquake motion within narrow frequency bands. The amplification of these waves is largely controlled by mechanical properties of these layers, which are function of their stiffness and damping. Stiffness and damping are further influenced by soil type and thickness. In the current study, an attempt has been made to study the seismic site response of deep soils. Three hypothetical homogeneous soil models (e.g., soft soil, medium soil and hard soil) lying on bedrock are considered. Depth of half space is varied from 30 m to 2,000 m in this study. Controlled synthetic motions are used as input base motion. One dimensional equivalent linear ground response analyses are carried out using a computer package DEEPSOIL. Conventional approach of analysing up to 30 m depth has been found to be inadequate for deep soil sites. PGA values are observed to be higher for deeper soil profiles as compared to shallow soil profiles indicating that deeper soil profiles are more prone to liquefaction and other related seismic hazards under earthquake ground shaking. The study recommends to deal the deeper soil sections more carefully for estimating the amplification factors for seismic hazard assessment at the surface.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.485-510
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• 2014

In performance-based seismic design procedures Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and pseudo-Spectral acceleration ($S_a$) are commonly used to predict the response of structures to earthquake. Recently, research has been carried out to evaluate the predictive capability of these standard Intensity Measures (IMs) with respect to different types of structures and Engineering Demand Parameter (EDP) commonly used to measure damage. Efforts have been also spent to propose alternative IMs that are able to improve the results of the response predictions. However, most of these IMs are not usually employed in probabilistic seismic demand analyses because of the lack of reliable Ground Motion Prediction Equations (GMPEs). In order to define seismic hazard and thus to calculate demand hazard curves it is essential, in fact, to establish a GMPE for the earthquake intensity. In the light of this need, new GMPEs are proposed here for the elastic input energy spectra, energy-based intensity measures that have been shown to be good predictors of both structural and non-structural damage for many types of structures. The proposed GMPEs are developed using mixed-effects models by empirical regressions on a large number of strong-motions selected from the NGA database. Parametric analyses are carried out to show the effect of some properties variation, such as fault mechanism, type of soil, earthquake magnitude and distance, on the considered IMs. Results of comparisons between the proposed GMPEs and other from the literature are finally shown.