• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.69 no.3
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• pp.257-268
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• 2019

Infills are as important members in structural design as beams, columns and braces. They have significant effect on structural behavior. Because of lots of variables in infills like material non-linear behavior, the interaction between frames and infill, etc., the infills performance during an earthquake is complicated, so have led designers do not consider the effect of infills in designing the structure. However, the experimental studies revealed that the infills have the remarkable effect on structure behavior. As if these effects ignored, it might occur soft-story phenomena, torsion or short-column effects on the structures. One simple and appropriate method for considering the infills effects in analyzing, is replacing the infills with diagonal compression strut with the same performance of real infill, instead of designing the whole infill. Because of too many uncertainties, codes and researchers gave many expressions that were not as the same as the others. The major intent of this paper is calculation the width of this diagonal strut, which has the most characteristics of infill. This paper by comprehensive on different parameters like the modulus of young or moment of inertia of columns presents a new formula for achieving the equivalent strut width. In fact, this new formula is extracted from about 60 FEM analyses models. It can be said that this formula is very efficient and accurate in estimating the equivalent strut width, considering the large number of effective parameters relative to similar relationships provided by other researchers. In most cases, the results are so close to the values obtained by the FEM. In this formula, the effect of out of plane buckling is neglected and this formula is used just in steel structures. Also, the thickness of infill panel, and the lateral force applied to frame are constant. In addition, this new formula is just for modeling the lateral stiffness. Obtaining the nearest response in analyzing is important to the designers, so this new formula can help them to reach more accurate response among a lot of experimental equations proposed by researchers.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.215-222
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• 2020

In this paper, slit steel rubber bearing is presented as an innovative seismic isolator device. In this type of isolator, slit steel damper is an energy dissipation device. Its advantages in comparison with that of the lead rubber bearing are its simplicity in manufacturing process and replacement of its yielding parts. Also, slit steel rubber bearing has the same ability to dissipate energy with smaller value of displacement. Using finite element method in ABAQUS software, a parametric study is done on the performance of this bearing. Three different kinds of isolator with three different values of strut width, 9, 12 and 15 mm, three values of thickness, 4, 6 and 8 mm and two steel types with different yield stress are assessed. Effects of these parameters on the performance characteristics of slit steel rubber bearing are studied. It is shown that by decreasing the thickness and strut width and by selecting the material with lower yield stress, values of effective stiffness, energy dissipation capacity and lateral force in the isolator reduce but equivalent viscous damping is not affected significantly. Thus, by choosing appropriate values for thickness, strut width and slit steel damper yield stress, an isolator with the desired behavior can be achieved. Finally, the performance of an 8-storey frame with the proposed isolator is compared with the same frame equipped with LRB. Results show that SSRB is successful in base shear reduction of structure in a different way from LRB.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.4
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• pp.423-442
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• 2018

In this paper, masonry infilled reinforced concrete (RC) frames are analyzed through a probabilistic approach. A macro-modeling technique, based on an equivalent diagonal pin-jointed strut, has been resorted to for modelling the stiffening contribution of the masonry panels. Since it is quite difficult to decide which mechanical characteristics to assume for the diagonal struts in such simplified model, the strut width is here considered as a random variable, whose stochastic characterization stems from a wide set of empirical expressions proposed in the literature. The stochastic analysis of the masonry infilled RC frame is conducted via the Probabilistic Transformation Method by employing a set of space transformation laws of random vectors to determine the probability density function (PDF) of the system response in a direct manner. The knowledge of the PDF of a set of response indicators, including displacements, bending moments, shear forces, interstory drifts, opens an interesting discussion about the influence of the uncertainty of the masonry infills and the resulting implications in a design process.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.615-623
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• 2015

The previous strut-and-tie models (STMs) to evaluate the shear strength of squat shear walls with aspect ratio less than 2.0 do not consider the axial load transfer of concrete strut and individual shear transfer contribution of horizontal and vertical shear reinforcing bars in the web. To overcome the limitation of the existing models, a simple STM was established based on the crack band theory of concrete fracture mechanics. The equivalent effective width of concrete strut having a stress relief strip was determined from the neutral axis depth and effective factor of concrete strength. The shear transfer mechanism of shear reinforcement at the extended crack band zone was calculated from an internally statically indeterminate truss system. The shear transfer capacity of concrete strut and shear reinforcement was then driven using the energy equilibrium in the stress relief strip and crack band zone. The shear strength predictions of squat shear walls evaluated from the current models are in better agreement with 150 test results than those determined from STMs proposed by Siao and Hwang et al. Furthermore, the proposed STM gives consistent agreement with the observed trend of the shear strength of shear walls against different parameters.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2019

The masonry infill walls are one of the most popular components that are used for dividing and arranging spaces in building construction. In spite of the fact that the masonry infills have many advantages, the system needs to be used with caution when the earthquake load is to be considered. The infills tend to develop diagonal compression struts during earthquake and increase the demand in surrounding RC frames. If there are openings in the infill walls, the loading path gets even complicated and the engineering judgements are required for designing the system. In this study, a masonry infill system was investigated through finite element analysis (FEA) and the results were compared with the current design standard, ASCE 41. It is noted that the equivalent width of the compression strut estimated by ASCE 41 could be 32% less than that using detailed FEA. The global load resisting capacity was also estimated by 28% less when ASCE 41 was used compare to the FEA case. Rather than using expensive FEA, the adapting ASCE 41 for the analysis and design of the masonry infills with openings would provide a good estimation by about 25% conservatively.