• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.825-837
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• 2017

Due to the severe impacts of recent earthquakes, the use of seismic isolation is paramount for the safety of nuclear structures. The diversity observed in seismic events demands ongoing research to analyze the devastating attributes involved, and hence to enhance the sustainability of base-isolated nuclear power plants. This study reports the seismic performance of a seismically-isolated nuclear reactor containment building (NRCB) under strong short-period ground motions (SPGMs) and long-period ground motions (LPGMs). The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission-based design response spectrum for the seismic design of nuclear power plants is stipulated as the reference spectrum for ground motion selection. Within the period range(s) of interest, the spectral matching of selected records with the target spectrum is ensured using the spectral-compatibility approach. NRC-compliant SPGMs and LPGMs from the mega-thrust Tohoku earthquake are used to obtain the structural response of the base-isolated NRCB. To account for the lack of earthquakes in low-to-moderate seismicity zones and the gap in the artificial synthesis of long-period records, wavelet-decomposition based autoregressive moving average modeling for artificial generation of real ground motions is performed. Based on analysis results from real and simulated SPGMs versus LPGMs, the performance of NRCBs is discussed with suggestions for future research and seismic provisions.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.103-110
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• 2020

Seismic qualification of instruments and devices mounted on electrical cabinets in a nuclear power plant is performed in this study by means of the in-cabinet response spectrum (ICRS). A simple method and two rigorous methods are proposed in the EPRI NP-7146-SL guidelines for generating the ICRS. The simple method of EPRI can give unrealistic spectra that are excessively conservative in many cases. In the past, the time domain analysis (TDA) methods have been mostly used to analyze a structure. However, the TDA requires the generation of an artificial earthquake input motion compatible to the target response spectrum. The process of generating an artificial earthquake may involve a great deal of uncertainty. In addition, many time history analyses should be performed to increase the accuracy of the results. This study developed a numerical analysis program for generating the ICRS by frequency domain analysis (FDA) method. The developed program was validated by the numerical study. The ICRS calculated by FDA thoroughly matched with those obtained from TDA. This study then confirms that the method it proposes can simply and efficiently generate the ICRS compared to the time domain method.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.103-110
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• 2012

In this paper, a target signal detection method using multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm is proposed. The MUSIC algorithm is a subspace-based direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method. Using the inverse of the eigenvalue-weighted eigen spectra, the algorithm detects the DOAs of multiple sources. To apply the algorithm in target signal detection for GSC-based beamforming, we utilize its spectral response for the DOA of the target source in noisy conditions. The performance of the proposed target signal detection method is compared with those of the normalized cross-correlation (NCC), the fixed beamforming, and the power ratio method. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the conventional ones in receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.709-723
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• 2007

Considering the vast usage of time-history dynamic analyses to calculate structural responses and lack of sufficient and suitable earthquake records, generation of artificial accelerograms is very necessary. The main target of this paper is to present a novel method based on nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model and wavelet transform to generate more artificial earthquake records, which are compatible with target spectrum. In this regard, the generalized nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model to include the nonstationary evaluation of amplitude and dominant frequency of ground motion and properties of wavelet transform is used to generate ground acceleration time history. Application of the method for El Centro 1940 earthquake and two Iranian earthquakes (Tabas 1978 and Manjil 1990) is presented. It is shown that the model and identification algorithms are able to accurately capture the nonstationary features of these earthquake accelerograms. The statistical characteristics of the spectral response of the generated accelerograms are compared with those for the actual records to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Also, for comparison of the presented method with other methods, the response spectra of the synthetic accelerograms compared with the models of Fan and Ahmadi (1990) and Rofooei et al. (2001) and it is shown that the response spectra of the synthetic accelerograms with the method of this paper are close to those of actual earthquakes.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.145-150
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• 1999

In the nonlinear dynamic structural analysis, the given ground excitation as an input should be well defined. Because of the lack of recorded accelerograms in Korea, it is required to generate an artificial earthquake by a stochastic model of ground excitation with various dynamic properties rather than recorded accelerograms. It is well known that earthquake motions are generally non-stationary with time-varying intensity and frequency content. Many researchers have proposed non-stationary random process models. Yeh and Wen (1990) proposed a non-stationary stochastic process model which can be modeled as components with an intensity function, a frequency modulation function and a power spectral density function to describe such non-stationary characteristics. This paper shows the process to generate nonstationary artificial earthquake ground motions considering target design response spectrum chosen by ATC14.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.389-395
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• 2017

In this paper a simple approach is presented for spectral matching of ground motions utilizing the wavelet transform and a recently developed metaheuristic optimization technique. For this purpose, wavelet transform is used to decompose the original ground motions to several levels, where each level covers a special range of frequency, and then each level is multiplied by a variable. Subsequently, the vibrating particles system (VPS) algorithm is employed to calculate the variables such that the error between the response and target spectra is minimized. The application of the proposed method is illustrated through modifying 12 sets of ground motions. The results achieved by this method demonstrate its capability in solving the problem. The outcomes of the VPS algorithm are compared to those of the standard colliding bodies optimization (CBO) to illustrate the importance of the enhancement of the algorithm.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2010

The importance of seismic design is greatly emphasized recently in Korea, resulting in an increase in the number of dynamic analysis being performed. One of the most important input parameters for the dynamic seismic analysis is input ground motion. However, it is common practice to use recorded motions from U.S. or Japan without considering the seismic environment of Korea or synthetic motions generated in the frequency domain. The recorded motions are not suitable for the seismic environment of Korea since the variation in the duration and energy with the earthquake magnitude cannot be considered. The artificial motions generated in frequency domain used to generated design response spectrum compatible ground motion has the problem of generating motions that have different frequency characteristics compared to real recordings. In this study, an algorithm that generates target response spectrum compatible ground motions in time domain is used to generate a suite of input ground motions. The generated motions are shown to preserve the non-stationary characteristics of the real ground motion and at the same, almost perfectly match the design response spectrum.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.223-232
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• 2021

The spatial variation characteristics of seismic motions at the nuclear power plant's site and structures were analyzed using earthquake records obtained at the Fukushima nuclear power plant during the Great East Japan Earthquake. The ground responses amplified as they approached the soil surface from the lower rock surface, and the amplification occurred intensively at about 50 m near the ground. Due to the soil layer's nonlinear characteristics caused by the strong seismic motion, the ground's natural frequency derived from the response spectrum ratio appeared to be smaller than that calculated from the shear wave velocity profile. The spatial variation of the peak ground acceleration at the ground surface of the power plant site showed a significant difference of about 0.6 g at the maximum. As a result of comparing the response spectrums at the basement of the structure with the design response spectrum, there was a large variability by each power plant unit. The difference was more significant in the Fukushima Daiichi site record, which showed larger peak ground acceleration at the surface. The earthquake motions input to the basement of the structure amplified according to the structure's height. The natural frequency obtained from the recorded results was lower than that indicated in the previous research. Also, the floor response spectrum change according to the location at the same height was investigated. The vertical response on the foundation surface showed a significant difference in spectral acceleration depending on the location. The amplified response in the structure showed a different variability depending on the type of structure and the target frequency.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.821-840
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• 2016

A simple design process is proposed for supplemental viscous dampers based on structural safety redundancy. In this process, the safety redundancy of the primary structure without a damper is assessed by the capacity and response spectra. The required damping ratio that should be provided by the supplemental dampers is estimated by taking the structural safety redundancy as a design target. The arrangement of dampers is determined according to the drift distribution obtained by performing pushover analysis. A benchmark model is used to illustrate and verify the validity of this design process. The results show that the structural safety redundancy of the structure provided by the viscous dampers increases to approximately twice that of the structure without a damper and is close to the design target. Compared with the existing design methods, the proposed process can estimate the elastic-plastic response of a structure more easily by using static calculation, and determine the required damping ratio more directly without iterative calculation or graphical process. It can be concluded that the proposed process is simple and effective.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.63-70
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• 2016

This study is the sequel of a companion paper (I. Algorithm) for assessment of the seismic performance evaluation of structure using ground motions selected by the proposed algorithm. To evaluate the effect of the correlation structures of selected ground motions on the seismic responses of a structure, three sets of ground motions are selected with and without consideration of the correlation structure. Nonlinear response history analyses of a 20-story reinforced concrete frame are conducted using the three sets of ground motions. This study shows that the seismic responses of the frames vary according to ground motion selection and correlation structures.