• Computers and Concrete
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.95-106
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• 2020

Castellated beams fabricated from standard I-sections are being used for several structural applications such as commercial and industrial buildings, multistory buildings, warehouses and portal frames in view of numerous advantages. The advantages include enhanced moment of inertia, stiffness, flexural resistance, reduction in weight of structure, by passing the used plate girders, the passage of service through the web openings etc. In the present study, experimental and numerical investigations were carried out on concrete encased steel castellated beams with hexagonal openings under flexural loading. Various positions of openings such as along the neutral axis, above the neutral axis and below the neutral axis were considered for the study. From the experimental findings, it has been observed that the load-carrying capacity of the castellated beam with web opening above neutral axis is found to be higher compared to other configurations. Nonlinear finite element analysis was performed by using general purpose finite element software ABAQUS considering the material nonlinearities. Concrete damage plasticity model was employed to model the nonlinearity of concrete and elasto-plastic model for steel. It has been observed that FE model could able to capture the behaviour of concrete encased steel castellated beams and the predicted values are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental values.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.647-662
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• 2016

This study aims to monitor the variation of modal frequencies of steel buildings during their construction sequence. In this respect, construction of a steel building is followed by vibration based measurements. The monitored building is a three-story educational building within a building group whose structural system consists of steel moment resisting steel frames and eccentric braces. Five different acceleration measurements in two perpendicular directions are taken on five different construction stages, starting from the erection of the columns and beams ending with the completion of the construction. The recorded measurements are transferred into frequency domain and the dominant frequencies for each case have been determined. The change in the dominant frequencies is evaluated with the existing construction stages and performed constructional works between the stages. The last measurement, performed on the building in service, revealed the first two dominant frequencies as mutual in X and Y direction, showing that these dynamic modes are torsional modes. This result is investigated by numerical analysis performed with finite element model of the building constructed for design purpose. Lower frequencies and different mode shapes are determined from numerical analysis. The reason of lower frequencies is discussed and the vibration survey is extended to determine the effects of an adjacent building. The results showed that the building is in strong relation with an adjoining building in spite of a designed construction joint.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.667-675
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• 2020

The current study compares the effect of structure-soil-structure interaction (SSSI) on the dynamic responses of adjacent buildings and isolated structures including soil-structure interaction (SSI) with the responses of fixed-base structures. Structural responses such as the relative acceleration, displacement, drift and shear force were considered under earthquake ground motion excitation. For this purpose, 5-, 10- and 15-story structures with 2-bay moment resisting frames resting on shallow foundations were modeled as a group of buildings in soft soil media. Viscous lateral boundaries and interface elements were applied to the soil model to simulate semi-infinite soil media, frictional contact and probable slip under seismic excitation. The direct method was employed for fully nonlinear time-history dynamic analysis in OpenSees using 3D finite element soil-structure models with different building positions. The results showed that the responses of the grouped structures were strongly influenced by the adjacent structures. The responses were as much as 4 times greater for drift and 2.3 times greater for shear force than the responses of fixed-base models.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2019

In the present study, the behavior of steel plate shear walls (SPSW) with variable column flexural stiffness is experimentally and numerically investigated. Altogether six one-bay one-story specimens, three moment resisting frames (MRFs) and three SPSWs, were designed, fabricated and tested. Column flexural stiffness of the first specimen pair (one MRF and one SPSW) corresponded to the value required by the design codes, while for the second and third pair it was reduced by 18% and 36%, respectively. The quasi-static cyclic test result indicate that SPSW with reduced column flexural stiffness have satisfactory performance up to 4% story drift ratio, allow development of the tension field over the entire infill panel, and cause negligible column "pull-in" deformation which indicates that prescribed minimal column flexural stiffness value, according to AISC 341-10, might be conservative. In addition, finite element (FE) pushover simulations using shell elements were developed. Such FE models can predict SPSW cyclic behavior reasonably well and can be used to conduct numerical parametric analyses. It should be mentioned that these FE models were not able to reproduce column "pull-in" deformation indicating the need for further development of FE simulations with cyclic load introduction which will be part of another paper.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.459-478
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• 2010

This paper contains detailed descriptions of a dynamic time-history modal analysis to calculate deflection, inter-storey drift and storey shear demand in single-storey and multi-storey buildings using an EXCEL spreadsheet. The developed spreadsheets can be used to obtain estimates of the dynamic response parameters with minimum input information, and is therefore ideal for supporting the conceptual design of tall building structures, or any other structures, in the early stages of the design process. No commercial packages, when customised, could compete with spreadsheets in terms of simplicity, portability, versatility and transparency. An innovative method for developing the stiffness matrix for the lateral load resistant elements in medium-rise and high-rise buildings is also introduced. The method involves minimal use of memory space and computational time, and yet allows for variations in the sectional properties of the lateral load resisting elements up the height of the building and the coupling of moment frames with structural walls by diaphragm action. Numerical examples are used throughout the paper to illustrate the development and use of the spreadsheet programs.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.23-48
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• 2013

In this study, the effect of flexibility of superstructures and nonlinear characteristics of LRB (Lead Rubber Bearing) isolator on inelastic response of base isolated structures is investigated. To demonstrate the intensity of damage in superstructures, demand response modification factor without the consideration of damping reduction factor, demand RI, is used and the N2 method is applied to compute this factor. To evaluate the influence of superstructure flexibility on inelastic response of base isolated structures, different steel intermediate moment resisting frames with different heights have been investigated. In lead rubber bearing, the rubber provides flexibility and the lead is the source of damping; variations of aforementioned characteristics are also investigated on inelastic response of superstructures. It is observed that an increase in height of superstructure leads to higher value of demand RI till 4-story frame but afterward this factor remains constant; in other words, an increase in height until 4-story frame causes more damage in the superstructure but after that superstructure's damage is equal to the 4-story frame's. The results demonstrate that the low value of second stiffness (rubber stiffness in LRBs) tends to show a significant decrease in demand RI. Increase in value of characteristic strength (yield strength of the lead in LRBs) leads to decrease in the demand RI.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.265-279
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• 2019

The self-centering capacity and energy dissipation performance have been recognized critically for increasing the seismic performance of structures. This paper presents an innovative steel moment frame with self-centering steel reinforced concrete (SRC) wall panel incorporating replaceable energy dissipation devices (SF-SCWD). The self-centering mechanism and energy dissipation mechanism of the structure were validated by cyclic tests. The earthquake resilience of wall panel has the ability to limit structural damage and residual drift, while the energy dissipation devices located at wall toes are used to dissipate energy and reduce the seismic response. The oriented post-tensioned strands provide additional overturning force resistance and help to reduce residual drift. The main parameters were studied by numerical analysis to understand the complex structural behavior of this new system, such as initial stress of post-tensioning strands, yield strength of damper plates and height-width ratio of the wall panel. The static push-over analysis was conducted to investigate the failure process of the SF-SCWD. Moreover, nonlinear time history analysis of the 6-story frame was carried out, which confirmed the availability of the proposed structures in permanent drift mitigation.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1508-1524
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• 2018

Hysteretic energy dissipating devices (HEDDs) have been increasingly applied to building construction to improve the seismic performance. The seismic responses of such damped structures are significantly affected by HEDD's structural properties. An accurate investigation on the propagation of HEDD's structural properties is required for reasonable evaluation of the seismic performance of a structure. This study aims to develop simplified methods that can estimate the collective uncertainty-propagation to the seismic response of damped structures employing HEDDs. To achieve this, three- and six-story steel moment-resisting frames were selected and the propagations of the individual HEDD's property-uncertainties were evaluated when they are subjected to various levels of seismic demand. Based on the result of individual uncertainty-propagations, a simplified method is proposed to evaluate the variation of seismic response collectively propagated by HEDD's property-uncertainties and is verified by comparing with the exact collective uncertainty-propagation calculated using the Monte Carlo simulation method. The proposed method, called as a modified SRSS method in this study, is established from a conventional square root of the sum of the squares (SRSS) method with the relative contributions of the individual HEDD's property-uncertainty propagations. This study shows that the modified SRSS method provides a better estimation than the conventional SRSS method and can significantly reduce computational time with reasonable accuracy compared with the Monte Carlo simulation method.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.279-293
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• 2021

Most of the existing seismic codes for RC buildings consider only a scenario earthquake for analysis, often characterized by the response spectrum at the specified location. However, any real earthquake event often involves occurrences of multiple earthquakes within a few hours or days, possessing similar or even higher energy than the first earthquake. This critically impairs the rehabilitation measures thereby resulting in the accumulation of structural damages for subsequent earthquakes after the first earthquake. Also, the existing seismic provisions account for the non-linear response of an RC building frame implicitly by specifying a constant response modification factor (R) in a linear elastic design. However, the 'R' specified does not address the changes in structural configurations of RC moment-resisting frames (RC MRFs) viz., building height, number of bays present, bay width, irregularities arising out of mass and stiffness changes, etc. resulting in changed dynamic characteristics of the structural system. Hence, there is an imperative need to assess the seismic performance under sequential earthquake ground motions, considering the adequacy of code-specified 'R' in the representation of dynamic characteristics of RC buildings. Therefore, the present research is focused on the evaluation of the non-linear response of medium-rise 3D RC MRFs with and without vertical irregularities under bi-directional sequential earthquake ground motions using non-linear dynamic analysis. It is evident from the results that collapse probability increases, and 'R' reduces significantly for various RC MRFs subjected to sequential earthquakes, pronouncing the vulnerability and inadequacy of estimation of design base shear by code-specified 'R' under sequential earthquakes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.5
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• pp.611-628
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• 2022

Energy-dissipative rocking (EDR) columns are a class of seismic mitigation device capable of dissipating seismic energy and preventing weak-story failure of moment resisting frames (MRFs). An EDR consists of two hinge-supported steel columns interconnected by steel dampers along its height. Under earthquakes, the input seismic energy can be dissipated by plastic energy of the steel dampers in the EDR column. However, the unrecoverable plastic deformation of steel dampers generally results in residual drifts in the structural system. This paper presents a proof-of-concept study on an innovative device, namely self-centring energy-dissipative rocking (SC-EDR) column, aiming at enabling self-centring capability of the EDR column by installing a set of shape memory alloy (SMA) tension braces. The working mechanism of the SC-EDR column is presented in detail, and the feasibility of the new device is carefully examined via experimental and numerical studies considering the parameters of the SMA bar diameter and the steel damper plate thickness. The seismic responses including load carrying capacities, stress distributions, base rocking behaviour, source of residual deformation, and energy dissipation are discussed in detail. A rational combination of the steel damper and the SMA tension braces can achieve excellent energy dissipation and self-centring performance.