• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• 제7권4호
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• pp.367-392
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• 2020

The specific characteristics of near-field earthquake records can lead to different dynamic responses of bridges compared to far-field records. However, the effect of near-field strong ground motion has often been neglected in the seismic performance assessment of the bridges. Furthermore, damage to horizontally curved multi-frame RC box-girder bridges in the past earthquakes has intensified the potential of seismic vulnerability of these structures due to their distinctive dynamic behavior. Based on the nonlinear time history analyses in OpenSEES, this article, assesses the effects of near-field versus far-field earthquakes on the seismic performance of horizontally curved multi-frame RC box-girder bridges by accounting the vertical component of the earthquake records. Analytical seismic fragility curves have been derived thru considering uncertainties in the earthquake records, material and geometric properties of bridges. The findings indicate that near-field effects reasonably increase the seismic vulnerability in this bridge sub-class. The results pave the way for future regional risk assessments regarding the importance of either including or excluding near-field effects on the seismic performance of horizontally curved bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.391-405
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• 2020

The use of passive energy dissipation devices has been widely used in the construction industry to minimize the probability of damage occurred under intense ground motion. In this study, collapse margin ratio (CMR) and fragility curves are the main parameters in the assessment to characterize the collapse safety of the structures. The assessment is done on three types of RC frame structures, incorporating three types of dampers, viscoelastic, friction, and BRB dampers. The Incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) were performed by simulating an array of 20 strong ground motion (SGM) records considering both far-field and near-field seismic scenarios that were followed by fragility curves. With respect to far-field ground motion records, the CMR values of the selected frames indicate to be higher and reachable to safety margin more than those under near-field ground motion records that introduce a high devastating impact on the structures compared to far-field excitations. This implies that the near field impact affects the ground movements at the site by attenuation the direction and causing high-frequency filtration. Besides that, the results show that the viscoelastic damper gives better performance for the structures in terms of reducing the damages compared to the other energy dissipation devices during earthquakes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제76권6호
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• pp.751-763
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• 2020

Available records of recent earthquakes show that near-field earthquakes have different characteristics than far-field earthquakes. In general, most of these unique characteristics of near-fault records can be attributed to their forward directivity. This phenomenon causes the records of ground motion normal to the fault to entail pulses with long periods in the velocity time history. The energy of the earthquake is almost accumulated in these pulses causing large displacements and, accordingly, severe damages in the building. Damage to structures caused by past earthquakes raises the need to assess the chance of future earthquake damage. There are a variety of methods to evaluate building seismic vulnerabilities with different computational cost and accuracy. In the meantime, fragility curves, which defines the possibility of structural damage as a function of ground motion characteristics and design parameters, are more common. These curves express the percentage of probability that the structural response will exceed the allowable performance limit at different seismic intensities. This study aims to obtain the fragility curve for low- and mid-rise structures of reinforced concrete moment frames by incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). These frames were exposed to an ensemble of 18 ground motions (nine records near-faults and nine records far-faults). Finally, after the analysis, their fragility curves are obtained using the limit states provided by HAZUS-MH 2.1. The result shows the near-fault earthquakes can drastically influence the fragility curves of the 6-story building while it has a minimal impact on those of the 3-story building.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제17권6호
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• pp.533-543
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• 2019

This paper presents a study on the behavior of an RC bridge under near-field and far-field ground motions. For this purpose, a dynamic nonlinear finite element time history analysis has been conducted. The near-field and far-field records are chosen pairwise from the same events which are fits to the seismic design of the bridge. In order to perform an accurate seismic evaluation, the model has been analyzed under two vertical and horizontal components of ground motions. Parameters of relative displacement, residual displacement, and maximum plastic strain have been considered and compared in terms of near-field and far-field ground motions. In the following, in order to decrease the undesirable effects of near-field ground motions, a viscous damper is suggested and its effects have been studied. In this case, the results show that the near-field ground motions increase maximum relative and residual displacement respectively up to three and twice times. Significant seismic improvements were achieved by using viscous dampers on the bridge model. Somehow under the considered near-field ground motion, parameters of residual and relative displacement decrease dramatically even less than the model without damper under the far-field record of the same ground motion.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.1-15
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• 2019

In the structures with high level of ductility, the earthquake energy dissipation in structural components is an important factor that describes their seismic behavior. Since the connection details play a major role in the ductile behavior of structure, in this paper, the seismic response of 3-, 5- and 8-story steel special moment frames (SMFs) is investigated by considering the effects of panel zone modeling and the influence of forward-directivity near-field ground motions. To provide a reasonable comparison, selected records of both near and far-field are used in the nonlinear time-history analysis of models. The results of the comparison of the median maximum inter-story drift under excitation by near-field (NF) records and the far-field (FF) ground motions show that the inter-story drift demands can be obtained 3.47, 4.86 and 5.92 times in 3-, 5- and 8-story structures, respectively, undergoing near-field earthquakes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제56권5호
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• pp.855-870
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• 2015

In this paper the effects of fling-step and forward-directivity on the seismic performance of steel eccentrically braced frames (EBFs) are addressed. Four EBFs with various numbers of stories (4-, 8-, 12- and 15-story) were designed for an area with high seismic hazard. Fourteen near-fault ground motions including seven with forward-directivity and seven with fling-step effects are selected to carry out nonlinear time history (NTH) analyses of the frames. Furthermore, seven more far-field records were selected for comparison. Findings from the study reveal that the median maximum links rotation of the frames subjected to three set of ground motions are in acceptable range and the links completely satisfy the requirement stated in FEMA 356 for LS performance level. The arrival of the velocity pulse in a near-fault record causes few significant plastic deformations, while many reversed inelastic cycles result in low-cycle fatigue damage in far-fault records. Near-fault records in some cases are more destructive and the results of these records are so dispersed, especially the records having fling-step effects.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.191-204
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• 2019

Near-field earthquake records including long-period high-amplitude velocity pulses can cause large isolation system displacements leading to buckling or rupture of isolators. In such cases, providing supplemental damping in the isolation system has been proposed as a solution. However, it is known that linear viscous dampers can reduce base displacements in case of near-field earthquakes but at the potential expense of increased superstructure response in case of far-field earthquakes. But can non-linear dampers with different levels of non-linearity offer a superior seismic performance? In order to answer this question, the effectiveness of non-linear viscous dampers in reducing isolator displacements and its effects on the superstructure response are investigated. A comparison with linear viscous dampers via time history analysis is done using a base-isolated benchmark building model under historical near-field and far-field earthquake records for a wide range of different levels of non-linearity and supplemental damping. The results show that the non-linearity level and the amount of supplemental damping play important roles in reducing base displacements effectively. Although use of non-linear supplemental dampers may cause superstructure response amplification in case of far-field earthquakes, this negative effect may be avoided or even reduced by using appropriate combinations of non-linearity level and supplemental damping.

• 한국지진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국지진공학회 2002년도 춘계 학술발표회 논문집
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• pp.125-132
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• 2002

In this study, a numerical method is developed for nonlinear analysis for soil-pile-structure interaction system in time domain. Finite elements considering material nonlinearity are used for the near field and boundary elements for the far field. In the near field, frame elements are used for modeling a pile and plane-strain elements for surrounding soil and superstructure. In. the far field, boundary element formulation using the dynamic fundamental solution is adopted and coupled with the near field. Transformation of stiffness matrices of boundary elements into time domain is performed by inverse FFT. Stiffness matrices in the near field and far field are coupled. Newmark direct time integration method is applied. Developed soil-pile-structure interaction analysis method is verified with available literature and commercial code. Also, parametric studies by developed numerical method are performed. And seismic response analysis is performed using actual earthquake records.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제62권4호
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• pp.497-506
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• 2017

A low damage self-centering braced frame equipped with post-tensioning strands is capable of directing damage to replaceable butterfly-shaped fuses. This paper investigates the seismic performance of rocking braced frame under near-field pulse-like ground motions compared to far-field records. A non-linear time history analysis is performed for twelve self-centering archetypes. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to examine the influences of ground motion types and modeling parameters. Findings represent the proper efficiency of the self-centering system under both far-field and near-field pulse-like ground motions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.155-165
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• 2018

Methods based on nonlinear static analysis as simple tools could be used for the seismic analysis and assessment of structures. In the present study, capability of the N2 method as a well-known nonlinear analysis procedure examines for the estimation of the damage index of multi-storey reinforced concrete frames. In the implemented framework, equivalent single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) models are utilized for the global damage estimation of multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) systems. This method does not require high computational analysis and subsequently decreases the required time of seismic design and assessment process. To develop the methodology, RC frames with period range from 0.4 to 2.0 s under 40 records are studied. The effectiveness of proposed technique is evaluated through numerical study under near- and far-field earthquake ground motions. Finally, the results of developed models are compared with two other simplified schemes along with nonlinear time history analysis results of multi-storey frames. To improve the accuracy of damage estimation, a modified relation is presented based on the N2 method results for near- and far-field earthquakes.