• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.615-632
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• 2001

Ductility of open piled wharves under reversed cyclic loads has been investigated. Experimental testing of five wharf models having a scale of about 1:4 was conducted under the application of horizontal reversed cyclic loading. The experiments were designed to focus on the horizontal ultimate load, ductility and failure mode of the considered wharf models. Nonlinear numerical analyses using the finite element method were also performed on numerical models representing the experimentally tested wharves. The results of the experimental tests showed that open piled wharves possessed favourable ductile behaviour and that their load bearing capacity did not depreciate until a ductility factor of 3 to 4 was reached. The numerical analysis showed that the relative rotation that took place at the joints between the steel piles and the R.C. beam was responsible for a considerable portion of the total horizontal deformation of the wharves. Therefore, it was concluded that introducing the joint stiffness in calculating the deformations of open piled wharves was important to achieve reasonable accuracy.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.358-365
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• 2006

In this study, fragility curves of continuous buried pipelines subjected to transverse PGD (permanent ground deformation) due to liquefaction are proposed. For the waterworks system, continuos buried pipelines made of ductile iron, poly ethylene, and poly vinyl chloride are analyzed and fragility curves are drawn. Fragility curves are based on the repetitive analyses results and formulated with the dominant factors of behaviour of buried pipeline. With the use of fragility curves, engineers can estimate the status of damage of buried pipeline without overall knowledge of relevant features. Especially, fragility curves proposed in this study will act as a major module of earthquake loss estimation method. Moreover, critical value of magnitude and width of transverse PGD (by which the full damage status of buried pipelines are induced) are estimated. With the use of regression curves of these values, pre evaluation of seismic safety of buried pipelines located within liquefaction hazardous region will be possible.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.70 no.3
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• pp.303-310
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• 2019

Any revision of seismic codes usually demands a higher capacity from structural members, making existing structures unsafe particularly from strength considerations. Retrofitting of capacity deficient members is very suitable for tackling such situations. This paper presents an experimental study on different retrofitting measures adopted for strengthening a series of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. Four identical RC beam specimens were casted, out of which three specimens were strengthened by different schemes (viz., bolted hot rolled flat, bolted cold-formed steel channel, and carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminate, respectively) on their tension face and tested under four-point monotonic loading. This study focuses on the investigation of the flexural behaviour of these retrofitted beams, observed in terms of strength and stiffness. It was concluded that all retrofitting measures improved the structural performance of these beams. However, the cost involved with each strengthening mode was proportional to the improvement in the performance achieved.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.239-260
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• 2021

Torsional response of buildings is attributed to poor structural configurations in plan, which arises due to two factors - torsional eccentricity and torsional flexibility. Usually, building codes address effects due to the former. This study examines both of these effects. Buildings with torsional eccentricity (e.g., those with large eccentricity) and with torsional flexibility (those with torsional mode as a fundamental mode) demand large deformations of vertical elements resisting lateral loads, especially those along the building perimeter in plan. Lateral-torsional responses are studied of unsymmetrical buildings through elastic and inelastic analyses using idealised single-storey building models (with two degrees of freedom). Displacement demands on vertical elements distributed in plan are non-uniform and sensitive to characteristics of both structure and earthquake ground motion. Limits are proposed to mitigate lateral-torsional effects, which guides in proportioning vertical elements and restricts amplification of lateral displacement in them and to avoid torsional mode as the first mode. Nonlinear static and dynamic analyses of multi-storey buildings are used to validate the limits proposed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.6
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• pp.687-708
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• 2020

Openings in steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) are usually used for decorative designs, crossing locations of multiple utilities and/or structural objectives. However, earlier studies showed that generating an opening in an SPSW has a negative effect on the cyclic performance of the SPSW. Therefore, this study proposes tripling or doubling the steel-sheet-plate (SSP) layer and stiffening the opening of the SPSW to provide a solution to undesirable opening effects, improve the SPSW performance and provide the infill option of potential strengthening measures after the construction stage. The study aims to investigate the impact of SSP doubling with a stiffened opening on the cyclic behaviour, expand the essential data required by structural designers and quantify the SPSW performance factors. Validated numerical models were adopted to identify the influence of the chosen parameters on the cyclic capacity, energy dissipation, ductility, seismic performance factors (SPF) and stiffness of the suggested method. A finite Element (FE) analysis was performed via Abaqus/CAE software on half-scale single-story models of SPSWs exposed to cyclic loading. The key parameters included the number of SSP layers, the opening size ratios corresponding to the net width of the SSP, and the opening shape. The findings showed that the proposed assembly method found a negligible influence in the shear capacity with opening sizes of 10, 15, 20%. However, a deterioration in the wall strength was observed for openings with sizes of 25% and 30%. The circular opening is preferable compared with the square opening. Moreover, for all the models, the average value of the obtained ductility did not show substantial changes and the ultimate shear resistance was achieved after reaching a drift ratio of 4.36%. Additionally, the equivalent sectional area of the SSP in the twin and triple configuration of the SPSWs demonstrated approximately similar results. Compared with the single SSP layer, the proposed configuration of the twin SSP layer with a stiffened opening suggest to more sufficiency create SSP openings in the SPSW compared to that of other configurations. Finally, a tabular SPF quantification is exhibited for SPSWs with openings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.1-12
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• 2004

Due to the 1989 Loma Prieta, 1995 Hyogoken Nambu earthquakes, etc, a number of bridge columns  were collapsed in flexure-shear failures as a consequence of the premature termination of the column longitudinal reinforcement. Nevertheless, previous researches for the performance of bridge columns were concentrated on the flexural failure mode. It is well understood that the seismic behaviour of RC bridge piers was dependent on the performance of the plastic hinge of RC bridge piers, the ductility of which was desirable to be computed on the basis of the curvature. Experimental investigation was made to evaluate the variation of the curvature of the plastic hinge  region for the seismic performance of earthquake-damaged RC columns in flexure-shear failure mode. Seven test specimens in the aspect ratio of 2.5 were made with test parameters: confinement ratios, lap splices, and retrofitting FRP materials. They were damaged under series of artificial earthquakes that could be compatible in Korean peninsula. Directly after the pseudo-dynamic test, damaged columns were retested under inelastic reversal cyclic loading under a constant axial load, $P=0.1f_{ck}A_g$. Residual seismic capacity of damaged specimens was evaluated by analzying the moment-curvature hysteresis and the curvature ductility. Test results show that the biggest curvature was developed around 15cm above the footing, which induced the column failure. It was observed that RC bridge specimens with lap-spliced longitudinal steels appeared to fail at low curvature ductility but significant improvement was made in the curvature ductility of RC specimens with FRP straps wrapped around the plastic hinge region. Based on the experimental variation of the curvature of RC specimens, new equivalent length of the plastic hinge region was proposed by considering the lateral confinement in this study. The analytical and experimental relationship between the displacement and the curvature ductility were compared based on this proposal, which gave excellent result.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.615-636
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• 2000

Some elevated water tanks have failed due to torsional vibrations in past earthquakes. The overall axisymmetric structural geometry and mass distribution of such structures may leave only a small accidental eccentricity between centre of stiffness and centre of mass. Such a small accidental eccentricity is not expected to cause a torsional failure. This paper studies the possibility of amplified torsional behaviour of elevated water tanks due to such small accidental eccentricity in the elastic as well as inelastic range; using two simple idealized systems with two coupled lateral-torsional degrees of freedom. The systems are capable of retaining the characteristics of two extreme categories of water tanks namely, a) tanks on staging with less number of columns and panels and b) tanks on staging with large number of columns and panels. The study shows that the presence of a small eccentricity may lead to large displacement of the staging edge in the elastic range, if the torsional-to-lateral time period ratio $({\tau})$ of the elevated tanks lies within a critical range of 0.7< ${\tau}$ <1.25. Inelastic behaviour study reveals that such excessive displacement in some of the reinforced concrete staging elements may cause unsymmetric yielding. This may lead to progressive strength deterioration through successive yielding in same elements under cyclic loading during earthquakes. Such localized strength drop progressively develop large strength eccentricity resulting in large localized inelastic displacement and ductility demand, leading to failure. So, elevated water tanks should have ${\tau}$ outside the said critical range to avoid amplified torsional response. The tanks supported on staging with less number of columns and panels are found to have greater torsional vulnerability. Tanks located near faults seem to have torsional vulnerability for large ${\tau}$.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.46-55
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• 2016

Three small scale hollow circular reinforced concrete columns(4.5 aspect ratio) were tested under cyclic lateral load with constant axial load. Diameter of section is 400 mm, hollow diameter is 200 mm. The selected test variable are transverse steel ratio. Volumetric ratio of spirals of all the columns is 0.302~0.604% in the plastic hinge region. It corresponds to 45.9~91.8% of the minimum requirement of confining steel by Korean Bridge Design Specifications, which represent existing columns not designed by the current seismic design specifications or designed by seismic concept. The final objectives of this study are to provide quantitative reference data and tendency for performance or damage assessment based on the performance levels such as cracking, yielding, steel fracture, etc. In this paper, describes mainly failure behavior, strength degradation behaviour, displacement ductility of circular reinforced concrete bridge columns with respect to test variables.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.505-526
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• 2005

The influence of the inter-story structural pounding on the seismic behaviour of adjacent multistory reinforced concrete structures with unequal total heights and different story heights is investigated. Although inter-story pounding is a common case in practice, it has not been studied before in the literature as far as the authors are aware. Fifty two pounding cases, each one for two different seismic excitations, are examined. From the results it can be deduced that: (i) The most important issue in the inter-story pounding is the local effect on the external column of the tall building that suffers the impact from the upper floor slab of the adjacent shorter structure. (ii) The ductility demands for this column are increased comparing with the ones without the pounding effect. In the cases that the two buildings are in contact these demands appear to be critical since they are higher than the available ductility values. In the cases that there is a small distance between the interacting buildings the ductility demands of this column are also higher than the ones of the same column without the pounding effect but they appear to be lower than the available ductility values. (iii) It has to be stressed that in all the examined cases the developed shear forces of this column exceeded the shear strength. Thus, it can be concluded that in inter-story pounding cases the column that suffers the impact is always in a critical condition due to shear action and, furthermore, in the cases that the two structures are in contact from the beginning this column appears to be critical due to high ductility demands as well. The consequences of the impact can be very severe for the integrity of the column and may be a primary cause for the initiation of the collapse of the structure. This means that special measures have to be taken in the design process first for the critically increased shear demands and secondly for the high ductility demands.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.67-75
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• 2008

In construction facilities such as bridges, the fluid boundary layer(or water film) is formed at the structure-soil interface by the inflow into the system due to rainfall or/and rising ground-water. As a result, the structure-soil interaction(SSI) state changes into the structure-fluid-soil interaction(SFSI) state. In general, construction facilities may be endangered by the inflow of water into the soil foundation. Thus, it is important to predict the dynamic SFSI responses accurately so that the facilities may be properly designed against such dangers. It is desired to have the robust tools of attaining such a purpose. However, there has not been any report of a method for the SFSI analyses. The objective of this study is to propose an efficient method of finite element modelling using the new interface element named hybrid interface element capable of giving reasonable predictions of the dynamic SFSI response. This element enables the simulation of the limited normal tensile resistance and the tangential hydro-plane behaviour, which has not been preceded in the previous studies. The hybrid interface element was tested numerically for its validity and employed in the analysis of SFSI responses of the continuous bridge subjected to seismic load under rainfall or/and rising ground-water condition. It showed that dynamic responses of the continuous bridge resting on direct foundation may be amplified under rainfall condition and consequently lead to significant variation of stresses.