• Wind and Structures
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.91-106
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• 2003

The paper presents the results of 1:50 geometrical scale laboratory modeling of wind-induced point pressure on the roof of the Texas Tech University (TTU) test building. The nominal (prevalent at the TTU site) wind and two bounding (low and high turbulence) flows were simulated in a boundary-layer wind tunnel at Colorado State University. The results showed significant increase in the pressure peak and standard deviation with an increase in the flow turbulence. It was concluded that the roof mid-plane pressure sensitivity to the turbulence intensity was the cause of the previously reported field-laboratory mismatch of the fluctuating pressure, for wind normal and $30^{\circ}$-off normal to the building ridge. In addition, it was concluded that the cornering wind mismatch in the roof corner/edge regions could not be solely attributed to the wind-azimuth-independent discrepancy between the turbulence intensity of the approach field and laboratory flows.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.95-109
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• 2018

Since the concept was first introduced in the 1970s, transit-oriented-development (TOD) has greatly expanded in East Asian cities such as Hong Kong. Rail stations are built together with clusters of residential-commercial towers and government services to form a new style of living - a "rail village." This paper examines the composition, scale, spatial form, organization and operation of several typical rail villages in Hong Kong. The cases range across those planned from the mid-1990s to 2015. Based on the analysis of the rail village composition, the paper derives a development ratio to indicate the density, effectiveness and efficiency of a rail village catchment area. The ratio provides a useful and direct figure for the comparison of different stations, cities and development modes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.189-196
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• 2020

The near-collapse performance limit is defined as the deformation at the 20% drop of maximum base shear in the decreasing region of the pushover curve for ductile framed buildings. Although monotonic pushover analysis is preferred due to the simple application procedure, this analysis gives rise to overestimated results by neglecting the cumulative damage effects. In the present study, the acceptabilities of monotonic and cyclic pushover analysis results for the near-collapse performance limit state are determined by comparing with Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) results for a 5-story Reinforced Concrete framed building. IDA is performed to obtain the collapse point, and the near-collapse drift ratios for monotonic and cyclic pushover analysis methods are obtained separately. These two alternative drift ratios are compared with the collapse drift ratio. The correlations of the maximum tensile and compression strain at the base columns and beam plastic rotations with interstory drift ratios are acquired using the nonlinear time history analysis results by the simple linear regression analyses. It is seen that these parameters are highly correlated with the interstory drift ratios, and the results reveal that the near-collapse point acquired by monotonic pushover analysis causes unacceptably high tensile and compression strains at the base columns, as well as large plastic rotations at the beams. However, it is shown that the results of cyclic pushover analysis are acceptable for the near-collapse performance limit state.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2019

The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming an increasingly popular means to model wind flows in and around buildings. The first published application of CFD to both indoor and outdoor building airflows was in the 1970's. Since then, CFD usage has expanded to include different aspects of building design. Wind tunnel testing (WTT) on buildings for wind loads goes back as far as 1908. Gustave Eiffel built a pair of wind tunnels in 1908 and 1912. Using these he published wind loads on an aircraft hangar in 1919 as cited in Hoerner (1965 - page 74). The second of these wind tunnels is still in use today for tests including building design ($Damljanovi{\acute{c}}$, 2012). The Empire State Building was tested in 1933 in smooth flow - see Baskaran (1993). The World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City were wind tunnel tested in the mid-sixties for both wind loads, at Colorado State University (CSU) and the [US] National Physical Laboratory (NPL), as well as pedestrian level winds (PLW) at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) - Baskaran (1993). Since then, the understanding of the planetary boundary layer, recognition of the structures of turbulent wakes, instrumentation, methodologies and analysis have been continuously refined. There is a drive to replace WTT with computational methods, with the rationale that CFD is quicker, less expensive and gives more information and control to the architects. However, there is little information available to building owners and architects on the limitations of CFD for flows around buildings and communities. Hence building owners, developers, engineers and architects are not aware of the risks they incur by using CFD for different studies, traditionally conducted using wind tunnels. This paper will explain what needs to happen for CFD to replace wind tunnels. Ultimately, we anticipate the reader will come to the same conclusion that we have drawn: both WTT and CFD will continue to play important roles in building and infrastructure design. The most pressing challenge for the design and engineering community is to understand the strengths and limitations of each tool so that they can leverage and exploit the benefits that each offers while adhering to our moral and professional obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.133-140
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• 2014

The friction damper can be used for improving the seismic resistance of existing buildings. The damper is often installed in bracing members. The energy dissipation capacity of the damping systems depends on the type of the structure, the configuration of the bracing members, and the property of dampers. In Korea, there are numerous low- to mid-rise reinforced concrete moment frames that were constructed considering only gravity loads. Those frames may be vulnerable for future earthquakes. To resolve the problem, this study developed a toggle bracing system with a high density friction damper. To investigate the improvement of reinforced concrete frames after retrofit using the developed damped system, experimental tests were conducted on frame specimens with and without the damped system. The results showed that the maximum strength, initial stiffness and energy dissipation capacity of the framed with the damped system were much larger than those of the frame without the damped system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.77-90
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• 2017

Glazed curtain walls are façade systems frequently chosen in modern architecture for mid and high-rise buildings. From recent earthquakes surveys it is observed the large occurrence of non-structural components failure, such as storefronts and curtain walls, which causes sensitive economic losses and represents an hazard for occupants and pedestrians safety. In the present study, the behavior of curtain wall stick systems under seismic actions has been investigated through experimental in-plane racking tests conducted at the laboratory of the Construction Technologies Institute (ITC) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) on two full-scale aluminium/glass curtain wall test units. A finite element model has been calibrated according to experimental results in order to simulate the behavior of such components under seismic excitation. The numerical model investigates the influence of the interaction between glass panels and aluminium frame, the gasket friction and the stiffness degradation of aluminium-to-glass connections due to the high deformation level on the curtain walls behavior. This study aims to give a practical support to researchers and/or professionals who intend to numerically predict the lateral behavior of similar façade systems, so as to avoid or reduce the need of performing expensive experimental tests.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.35-57
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• 2022

This article presents a computationally efficient framework for multi-objective seismic design optimization of steel moment-resisting frame (MRF) structures based on the nonlinear dynamic analysis procedure. This framework employs the uniform damage distribution philosophy to minimize the weight (initial cost) of the structure at different levels of damage. The preliminary framework was recently proposed by the authors based on the single excitation and the nonlinear static (pushover) analysis procedure, in which the effects of record-to-record variability as well as higher-order vibration modes were neglected. The present study investigates the reliability of the previous framework by extending the proposed algorithm using the nonlinear dynamic design procedure (optimization under multiple ground motions). Three benchmark structures, including 4-, 8-, and 12-story steel MRFs, representing the behavior of low-, mid-, and high-rise buildings, are utilized to evaluate the proposed framework. The total weight of the structure and the maximum inter-story drift ratio (IDRmax) resulting from the average response of the structure to a set of seven ground motion records are considered as two conflicting objectives for the optimization problem and are simultaneously minimized. The results of this study indicate that the optimization under several ground motions leads to almost similar outcomes in terms of optimization objectives to those are obtained from optimization under pushover analysis. However, investigation of optimal designs under a suite of 22 earthquake records reveals that the damage distribution in buildings designed by the nonlinear dynamic-based procedure is closer to the uniform distribution (desired target during the optimization process) compared to those designed according to the pushover procedure.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.435-442
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• 2017

A lateral load resisting system is a necessary structural element for the mid- to high-rise modular buildings and concrete cores are known as the most typical lateral load resisting systems in 10- to 20-story modular buildings. It is difficult to construct a concrete core simultaneously with the installation and finishing work of modular units because concrete placed using wet methods might contaminate or destroy the modular unit. Therefore, we have developed a hybrid PC (precast concrete) panel construction method that can construct a concrete core together with the installation of modular units. The hybrid PC panel is a load-bearing element in which a pair of C-shaped beams are combined at the top and bottom of a concrete wall. Concrete cores can be constructed by dry method to connect the hybrid PC panels with bolts. In this study, the details and connection of hybrid PC panels are improved to have the lateral performance comparable to reinforced concrete structural walls and are verified through FE analysis.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.537-547
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• 2014

A steel modular unit structural system has been used increasingly for mid and high-rise buildings, since the building can be easily constructed by assembling the pre-made modular unit structures. For this structural system, each modular unit structures have to be properly connected to the foundation to transfer the axial force and the bending moment that are generated from external load to the ground. In this study, a new type of the embedded steel column-to-foundation connection was proposed, and its flexural behavior was evaluated through a series of experimental study. Five full scale specimens for the proposed connections were constructed and tested. The effect of the main parameters that affect the flexural behavior of the proposed connection, such as embedment length and shape of end plate, were studied. From the results, it was found that the flexural stiffness of the proposed connection was higher than that of the semi-rigid connection for all test specimens, and 200 mm of embedment length was proper for the given test specimens in this study.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.124-132
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• 2023

When the building becomes high, the number of households increases and they are adjacent to the elevator. So, frequency of use of elevators will increase. Elevator noise is bound to increase in the future. However, there are currently no legal standards for elevator noise or measurement and evaluation methods that can clearly measure elevator noise in Korea. Although some methods for measuring elevator noise are presented in KS F ISO 16032, this standard is not a standard established for elevator noise. It is a standard that integrates the overall measurement method of building equipment and equipment, and the position of the microphone is selected by the experimenter during measurement. Elevator noise is characterized by a low sound pressure level as the noise in the mid-low frequency band is important. However, even today, complaints from residents about elevator noise are increasing. In this study, the position of the microphone that can most sensitively pick up the elevator noise when measuring the elevator noise was studied. According to the distance from the wall and the height from the floor, a total of 9 microphone positions were measured and analyzed. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that the elevator noise has a very high influence in the 63 Hz band. The measured value at the center point was identified as a factor that lowered the overall elevator noise level value.