• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.69 no.6
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• pp.651-665
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• 2019

Past earthquakes have shown that appropriately designed and detailed buildings with shear walls have great performance such a way that a considerable portion of inelastic energy dissipation occurs in these structural elements. A plastic hinge is fundamentally an energy diminishing means which decrease seismic input energy through the inelastic deformation. Plastic hinge development in a RC shear wall in the areas which have plastic behavior depends on the ground motions characteristics as well as shear wall details. One of the most generally used forms of structural walls is flanged RC wall. Because of the flanges, these types of shear walls have large in-plane and out-of-plane stiffness and develop high shear stresses. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the main characteristics of these structural components and provide a more comprehensive expression of plastic hinge length in the application of performance-based seismic design method and promote the development of seismic design codes for shear walls. In this regard, the effects of axial load level, wall height, wall web and flange length, as well as various features of earthquakes, are examined numerically by finite element methods and the outcomes are compared with consistent experimental data. Based on the results, a new expression is developed which can be utilized to determine the length of plastic hinge area in the flanged RC shear walls.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.789-830
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• 2015

The recent re-assessment of the seismic hazard in Europe led for many regions of low to moderate seismicity to an increase in the seismic demand. As a consequence, several modern unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings, constructed with reinforced concrete (RC) slabs that provide an efficient rigid diaphragm action, no longer satisfy the seismic design check and have been retrofitted by adding or replacing URM walls with RC walls. Of late, also several new construction projects have been conceived directly as buildings with both RC and URM walls. Despite the widespread use of such construction technique, very little is known about the seismic behaviour of mixed RC-URM wall structures and codes do not provide adequate support to designers. The aim of the paper is therefore to propose a displacement-based design methodology for the design of mixed RC-URM edifices and the retrofit of URM buildings by replacing or adding selected URM walls with RC ones. The article describes also two tools developed for estimating important quantities relevant for the displacement-based design of structures with both RC and URM walls. The tools are (i) a mechanical model based on the shear-flexure interaction between URM and RC walls and (ii) an elastic model for estimating the contribution of the RC slabs to the overturning moment capacity of the system. In the last part of the article the proposed design method is verified through nonlinear dynamic analyses of several case studies. These results show that the proposed design approach has the ability of controlling the displacement profile of the designed structures, avoiding concentration of deformations in one single storey, a typical feature of URM wall structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.281-295
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• 2016

This paper presents a study on a non-seismically designed reinforced concrete (RC) frame structure. The structure was a existing three-story office building constructed according to the 1990s practice in Vietnam. The 1/3 scaled down versions of structure was tested on a shake table to investigate the seismic performance of this type of construction. It was found that the inter-story drift and the overall behavior of structure meet the requirements of the actual seismic design codes. Then, nonlinear time history analyses are carried out using the fiber beam- column elements. The comparison between the experimental and simulation results shows the performance of the time history analysis models.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.527-538
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• 2012

In seismic analyses of structures, additional eccentricity is introduced to take account for oscillations of random and unknown origins. In many codes of practice, the torsion about the vertical axis is considered through empirical accidental eccentricity formulation. Due to the random nature of structural systems, it is very difficult to evaluate the accidental eccentricity in a deterministic way and to specify its effect on the overall seismic response of structures. The aim of this study is to develop a procedure for the evaluation of the accidental eccentricity induced by uncertainties in stiffness and mass of structural members, using the neural network techniques coupled with Monte Carlo simulations. This method gives very interesting results for single story structures. For real structures, this method can be used as a tool to determine the accidental eccentricity in the seismic vulnerability studies of buildings.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.639-650
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• 2019

Time-domain commercial codes are widely used to evaluate the seismic behavior of tunnels. Those tools offer a good insight into the performance and the failure mechanism of tunnels under earthquake loading. Viscous damping is generally employed in the dynamic analysis to consider damping at very small strains in some cases, and the Rayleigh damping is commonly used one. Many procedures to obtain the damping parameters have been proposed but they are seldom discussed. This paper illustrates the influence of the Rayleigh damping formulation on the tunnel visco-elastic behavior under earthquake. Four Rayleigh damping determination procedures and three soil shear velocity profiles are accounted for. The results show significant differences in the free-field and in the tunnel response caused by different procedures. The difference is somewhat decreased when the soil site fundamental frequency is increased. The conventional method which consists of using solely the first soil natural mode to determine the viscous damping parameters may lead to an unsafe seismic design of the tunnel. In general, using five times site fundamental frequency to obtain the damping formulation can provide relatively conservative results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.91 no.4
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• pp.349-355
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• 2024

This paper investigates the influence of the torsional component of earthquake on the nonlinear structural behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. It also estimates the equivalent additional eccentricity that results from this component. For this purpose, we generate torsional accelerograms from translational ones and conduct nonlinear seismic analysis on both regular and irregular structures. The results show that the torsional component has a significant impact on the structural response, especially for irregular structures. The equivalent additional eccentricity of the cases studied was higher than 5% which is the value of accidental eccentricity suggested by many seismic codes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.433-447
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• 2024

During earthquakes, regular buildings perform better than irregular buildings. In general, seismic design codes define a regular building using estimates of Storey Stiffness and Storey Strength. At present, seismic design codes do not recommend a specific method to estimate these parameters. Consequently, any method described in the literature can be applied to estimate the aforementioned parameters. Nevertheless, research has demonstrated that storey stiffness and storey strength vary depending on the estimation method employed. As a result, the same building can be regular or irregular, depending on the method employed to estimate storey stiffness and storey strength. Hence, there is a need to identify the best method to estimate storey stiffness and storey strength. For this purpose, the study presents a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of nine approaches used to determine storey stiffness. Similarly, the study compares six approaches for estimating storey strength. Subsequently, the study identifies the best method to estimate storey stiffness and storey strength using results of 350 linear time history analyses and 245 nonlinear time history analyses, respectively. Based on the comparison, it is concluded that the Fundamental Lateral Translational Mode Shape Method and Isolated Storey Method - A Particular Case are the best methods to estimate storey stiffness and storey strength of low-to-mid rise buildings, respectively.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.11-25
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• 2018

A numerical approach for the evaluation of the flexural response of Steel Fibrous Concrete (SFC) cross-sections with arbitrary geometry, with or without conventional steel longitudinal reinforcing bars is proposed. Resisting bending moment versus curvature curves are calculated using verified non-linear constitutive stress-strain relationships for the SFC under compression and tension which include post-peak and post-cracking softening parts. A new compressive stress-strain model for SFC is employed that has been derived from test data of 125 stress-strain curves and 257 strength values providing the overall compressive behaviour of various SFC mixtures. The proposed sectional analysis is verified using existing experimental data of 42 SFC beams, and it predicts the flexural capacity and the curvature ductility of SFC members reasonably well. The developed approach also provides rational and more accurate compressive and tensile stress-strain curves along with bending moment versus curvature curves with regards to the predictions of relevant existing models.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1991.04a
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• pp.72-78
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• 1991

An improved procedure for earthquake resistant design of multistory building structures is proposed in this study. The effect of gravity load on seismic response of structures is evaluated through nonlinear dynamic analyses of a single story example structure. The presence of gravity load tends to initiate plastic hinge formation in earlier stage of a strong earthquake. However, the effect of gravity load seems to disapper as ground motion is getting stronger. And one of shortcomings in current earthquake resistant codes is overestimation of gravity load effects when earthquake load is applied at the same time so that it may leads to less inelastic deformation or structural damage in upper stories, and inelastic deformation is increased in lower stories. Based on these observation, an improved procedure for earthquake resistant design is derived by reducing the factor for gravity load and inceasing that for seismic load. Structures designed by the proposed design procedure turned out to have increased safety and stability against strong earthquakes.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.330-337
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• 2002

The objective of the earthquake resistant design of structures is to satisfy on the one side the minimization of damage requirement under earthquakes with high probability of occurrence during the design life and on the other side the no collapse requirement under the design seismic event with low probability of occurrence. The two requirements are satisfied with the minimum strength of substructure as well as the ductile failure mechanism presented in the codes. In this study seismic performance is evaluated with two bridges which have steel box superstructures and T type, II type piers as substructures. In order to satisfy the two requirements redesign of both substructures and steel bearings are carried out.