• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.323-342
• /
• 2013

In the case of seismic-resistant composite dual moment resisting and eccentrically braced frames, the current design practice is to avoid the disposition of shear connectors in the expected plastic zones, and consequently to consider a symmetric moment or shear plastic hinges, which occur only in the steel beam or link. Even without connectors, the real behavior of the hinge may be different from the symmetric assumption since the reinforced concrete slab is connected to the steel element close to the hinge locations, and also due to contact friction between the concrete slab and the steel element. At a larger level, the structural response in the case of important seismic motions depends directly on the elasto-plastic behavior of elements and hinges. The numerical investigation presented in this study summarizes the results of elasto-plastic analyses of several steel frames, considering the interaction of the steel beam with the concrete slab. Several parameters, such as the inter-story drift, plastic rotation requirements and behavior factors q were monitored. In order to obtain accurate results, adequate models of plastic hinges are proposed for both the composite short link and composite reduced beam sections.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.11-20
• /
• 2023

"Performance-based design (PBD)" is based on designing a structure with choosing a performance target under design criteria to increase the structure's resistance against earthquake effect. The plastic hinge formation is determined as one of the fundamental data in finite elements nonlinear analysis to distinguish the condition of the structure where more significant potential damage could occur. If the number of plastic hinges in the structure is increased, the total horizontal load capability of the structure is increased, also. Theoretically, when the number of plastic hinges of the plane frame structure reaches "the degree of hyperstaticity plus one", the structure will reach the capability of the largest ultimate horizontal load. As the number of plastic hinges to be formed in the structure increases towards the theoretical plastic hinge number (TPHN), the total horizontal load capability of the structure increases, proportionally. In the previous studies of the authors, the features of examining the new performance criteria were revealed and it was formulated as follows "Increase the total number of plastic hinges to be formed in the structure to the number of theoretical plastic hinges as much as possible and keep the structure below its targeted performance with related codes". With this new performance criterion, it has been shown that the total lateral load capability of the building is higher than the total lateral load capability obtained with the traditional PBD method by the FEMA 440 and FEMA 356 design guides. In this study, PBD analysis results of structures with frame carrier systems are presented in the light of the Turkey Building Earthquake Code 2019. As a result of this study, it has been shown that the load capability of the structure in the examples of structures with frame carrier system increases by using this new performance criterion presented, compared to the results of the examination with the traditional PBD method in TBEC 2019.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.73-84
• /
• 2020

In the seismic design of bridges, formation of plastic hinges plays an important role in the dissipation of seismic energy. In the case of conventional fixed-base bridges, the plastic hinges are allowed to form in the superstructure alone. During seismic event, such bridges may be safe from collapse but the superstructure undergoes significant plastic deformations. As an alternative design approach, the plastic hinges are guided to form in the soil thereby utilizing the inevitable yielding of the soil. Rocking foundations work on this concept. The formation of plastic hinges in the soil reduces the load and displacement demands on the superstructure. This study aims at evaluating the seismic response of bridge pier supported on rocking shallow foundation. For this purpose, a BNWF model is implemented in OpenSees platform. The capability of the BNWF model to capture the SSI effects, nonlinear behavior and dynamic loading response are validated using the centrifuge and shake table test results. A comparative study is performed between the seismic response of the bridge pier supported on the rocking shallow foundation and conventional fixed-base foundation. Results of the study have established the beneficial effects of using the rocking shallow foundation for the seismic response analysis of the bridge piers.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.21-34
• /
• 2002

A model of the process of local buckling in tubular steel structural elements is presented. It is assumed that this degrading phenomenon can be lumped at plastic hinges. The model is therefore based on the concept of plastic hinge combined with the methods of continuum damage mechanics. The state of this new kind of inelastic hinge is characterized by two internal variables: the plastic rotation and the damage. The model is valid if only one local buckling appears in the plastic hinge region; for instance, in the case of framed structures subjected to monotonic loadings. Based on this damage model, a new finite element that can describe the development of local buckling is proposed. The element is the assemblage of an elastic beamcolumn and two inelastic hinges at its ends. The stiffness matrix, that depends on the level of damage, the yielding function and the damage evolution law of the two hinges define the new finite element. In order to verify model and finite element, several small-scale frames were tested in laboratory under monotonic loading. A lateral load at the top of the frame was applied in a stroke-controlled mode until local buckling appears and develops in several locations of the frame and its ultimate capacity was reached. These tests were simulated with the new finite element and comparison between model and test is presented and discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
• /
• 2008.11a
• /
• pp.221-224
• /
• 2008

A secant stiffness linear analysis method was developed for moment redistribution of moment-resisting frames. In the proposed method, rotational spring models are used for plastic hinges of the members whose flexural moments are needed to be redistributed. At the plastic hinges, secant stiffness is used to address the effect of the flexural stiffness reduced by inelastic deformation. Linear analysis is repeated with adjusted secant stiffness until the flexural equilibrium is satisfied in the structure and members. By using the secant stiffness analysis, the effect of the inelastic deformation on the moment redistribution can be considered. Further, the safety of plastic hinges can be evaluated by comparing the inelastic rotation resulting from the secant stiffness analysis with the rotational capacity of the plastic hinges. For verification, the proposed method was applied to a continuous beam tested in previous study. A application example for a multiple story moment-resisting frame was presented.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.31 no.6
• /
• pp.381-388
• /
• 2018

This paper presents a generalized finite element formulation for plastic hinge modeling based on lumped plasticity in the classical Euler-Bernoulli beam elements. In this approach, the plastic hinges are effectively modeled using proper enrichment functions describing weak discontinuities of the solution. The proposed methodology enables the insertion of plastic hinges at an arbitrary location without modifying the connectivity of elements. The formations of plastic hinges are instead achieved by hierarchically adding degrees of freedom to existing elements. Convergence analyses such as h- and p-extensions are performed to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The analysis results indicate that the proposed generalized finite element method can achieve theoretical convergence rates for both cases where plastic hinges are located at nodes and within an element, thus demonstrating its accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.54 no.3
• /
• pp.491-500
• /
• 2015

Under seismic loading, underground station structures behave differently from above ground structures. Underground structures do not require designated energy dissipation system for seismic loads. These structures are traditionally designed with shear or racking deformation capacity to accommodate the movement of the soil caused by shear waves. The free-field shear deformation method may not be suitable for the design of shallowly buried station structures with complex structural configurations. Alternatively, a station structure can develop rocking mechanisms either as a whole rigid body or as a portion of the structure with plastic hinges. With a rocking mechanism, station structures can be tilted to accommodate lateral shear deformation from the soil. If required, plastic hinges can be implemented to develop rocking mechanism. Generally, rocking structures do not expect significant seismic loads from surrounding soils, although the mechanism may result in significant internal forces and localized soil bearing pressures. This method may produce a reliable and robust design of station structures.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.353-362
• /
• 2015

Cyclic loading tests for the PC moment frame with plastic shear hinges were performed to evaluate the seismic performance. The plastic shear hinges consisted of two steel plates were installed at the mid-length of the beam to connect the PC frames. Three shear links are existed in each steel plate. The three shear links were designed using shear force corresponding to the shear capacity of 50%, 75%, and 100% of the beam shear capacity. The proposed connections showed an efficient energy dissipation capacity and good structural performance. As a result, it is reasonable to design the plastic shear hinges using design shear capacity less than 100% of the beam shear capacity.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.315-329
• /
• 2013

The construction of an experimental nonlinear structural model with little cost and unlimited repeatability for vibration control study represents a challenging task, especially for material nonlinearity. This paper reports the design, analysis and vibration control of a nonlinear structural experiment platform with adjustable hinges. In our approach, magnetorheological rotary brakes are substituted for the joints of a frame structure to simulate the nonlinear material behaviors of plastic hinges. For vibration control, a separate magnetorheological damper was employed to provide semi-active damping force to the nonlinear structure. A dynamic neural network was designed as a state observer to enable the feedback based semi-active vibration control. Based on the dynamic neural network observer, an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode based output control was developed for the magnetorheological damper to suppress the vibrations of the structure. The performance of the intelligent control algorithm was studied by subjecting the structure to shake table experiments. Experimental results show that the magnetorheological rotary brake can simulate the nonlinearity of the structural model with good repeatability. Moreover, different nonlinear behaviors can be achieved by controlling the input voltage of magnetorheological rotary damper. Different levels of nonlinearity in the vibration response of the structure can be achieved with the above adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control algorithm using a dynamic neural network observer.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.22 no.3
• /
• pp.315-326
• /
• 2018

This paper presents a novel time-domain method for the identification of plastic rotations and stiffness parameters of single-bay frames with nonlinear plastic hinges. Each plastic hinge is modelled as a pseudo-semi-rigid connection with nonlinear hysteretic moment-curvature characteristics at an element end. Through the comparison of the identified end rotations of members that are connected together, the plastic rotation that furnishes information of the locations and plasticity degrees of plastic hinges can be identified. The force consideration of the frame members may be used to relate the stiffness parameters to the elastic rotations and the excitation. The damped-least-squares method and damped-and-weighted-least-squares method are adopted to estimate the stiffness parameters of frames. A noise-removal strategy employing a de-noising technique based on wavelet packets with a smoothing process is used to filter out the noise for the parameter estimation. The numerical examples show that the proposed method can identify the plastic rotations and the stiffness parameters using measurements with reasonable level of noise. The unknown excitation can also be estimated with acceptable accuracy. The advantages and disadvantages of both parameter estimation methods are discussed.